


the river's deep (but I swam it)

by isawet



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Party, clexahalloweenweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-23 11:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12505972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: Clexa Halloween Week Fills.Day One: Clarke needs an extracurricular and Lexa is the president of the Paranormal Encounters club. (hsau, fluff)Day Two: Lexa is a ghost and Clarke moves into her house. (modern au)Day Three: Clarke is focused on figuring out their costumes for a party. Lexa is pretty focused on getting Clarke out of any clothes at all. (modern au, fluffy ficlet, dorky girlfriends in love).Day Four: Clarke has game, she swears. There’s just a lot of current evidence to the contrary. (modern au, they meet at a halloween party, pure fluff)Five: Halloween night, canonverse, ficlet.





	1. day one: horror movie

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta-ed, I'll fix errors as I become aware of them (feel free to tell me if you spot one!)

“You can have the car back,” her mother says, “when we’ve confirmed, independently, that you’ve actually signed up for and are participating in, an extracurricular activity. At the end of the semester.”

Clarke bats her eyes, making them big and almost teary, her face pouty. “Dad, I--”

Her father averts his gaze, one hand outstretched, dramatic. “Look away, demon! Lest I be tempted by your visage.”

Clarke drops the act. “You’re a dork.” She turns to her mother. “And you’re a witch.”

Her mother, in the kitchen, passes her hand across the motion sensor that causes the cauldron full of candy to blare out a tinny witch’s cackle. “Tis the season.”

“I hate you both. I hope I get kidnapped by a pervert on the city bus. You’ll never get over the death of your only child.” Clarke stabs into what’s left of her chicken thigh. “You’ll visit my empty grave every year but it won’t matter. Your marriage will disintegrate. You’ll lose the house. All because you wanted to punch up my college application.”

Her father stands, kissing her on the temple as he passes. “Go for the groin, honey. We believe in you.”

++

Clarke cuts first period in protest. Then she pays Raven twenty dollars for a blank excused absence note in a panic.

“Nerd,” Raven says, and rips it off the pad she keeps in her backpack, with the rest of the contraband. “Anything else I can get you?”

“I need a list of clubs on campus. Do you know what sports are in season?”

“Field hockey and swim tryouts passed. Next up is soccer, basketball.”

“Ugh,” Clarke mutters. “Club list?”

Raven rubs her thumb and pointer finger together. Clarke sighs. She finds a five dollar bill in her jeans pocket and thrusts it at her. Raven hands her a piece of paper. “It’s in the back of the planner, idiot.”

++

“Photography,” Clarke says, at lunch. “I could do that. Every Tuesday at lunch? No problem.”

“Niylah’s in photography,” Octavia informs her, during the five second break she and Lincoln take before they go back to making out.

“Fuck,” Clarke mutters. She scans the list. _Future Business Leaders of America, Mock Trial, Model UN_ \--“what the fuck is a rotary?”

No answer. Octavia won’t be good for a comment for another two minutes, minimum. 

_Paranormal Encounters_ , Clarke reads. She taps her finger against it.

++

Clarke didn’t even know the school had a basement. 

“Hello? I’m looking for uh. The club meeting?”

A girl appears at the foot of the stairs, glaring. “This is a closed meeting. Members only.”

Clarke lets the door shut behind her, the fluorescent bulbs flickering. “Right. I’m… trying to join?”

The girl pauses. She thinks. “No.” She turns and walks away.

Clarke sputters. She clatters down the rest of the steps. “Hey! Why--woah.” It’s one large room, cluttered with filing cabinets and shelves and old equipment, science and sports and stacks of books. “Are we even allowed down here?”

“I am.” The girl is hunched over a table in the corner, where a tiny workspace has been erected, the tabletop littered with electronic equipment. There’s even a desktop computer humming away. 

“I guess you’re Lexa. Unless the rest of the club is hiding in the sewers.”

Lexa tosses her a look. “There’s no sewer access at the school, that’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, “ _That’s_ ridiculous.” An idea strikes her and she ventures forward. “Hey. I need my name to be on a club roster and from the look of things, you could use another member, but neither of us actually want me to participate. I think there’s a symbiotic relationship to be found here.”

“Parasitic.”

“What?”

Lexa turns, tapping away at the keyboard. “You want me tell everyone you’re in the club, that you’re participating. Falsify official documents--”

Clarke scoffs. “The rosters are turned in on wide ruled paper, it’s hardly notarized--”

“All the work is on me. The gain on you. That makes it parasitic.”

“I’m Clarke.”

Lexa actually looks up. “What?”

“I’m Clarke Griffin.”

“I don’t care.”

“Wow,” Clarke says, dry. “I’m shocked you aren’t besieged by potential members.”

“I don’t have time for you,” Lexa informs her. “I have a large operation coming up. I’ve sunk two years into it.”

“Right,” Clarke agrees, pushing the subject. “So you probably need… tech support?”

Lexa shoots her a look.

“Manual labor,” Clarke amends. “I pick things up and put them down?”

Lexa taps her nails on the tabletop. 

Clarke presses the advantage. “For this one operation. No questions, no snitching. You tell me what to do and I do it, and you leave my name on the list for the semester.”

Lexa’s eyes narrow. “And why would there need to be a stipulation about snitching.”

“Lexa,” Clarke sighs. “I may not be the former leader of the model UN, but even I know whatever someone is getting up to in a darkened publically funded basement can’t be any good.”

“You know who I am.” Lexa’s tone is surprised, almost more curious than suspicious.

Clarke shrugs. “Not that big a school. Why’d you quit, anyway? Last I heard on the announcements was that you had more trophies than the school could fit into the case.”

Lexa closes a black case with a snap. “No questions,” she reminds Clarke. “I’ll deliver the amended member list to the office after fifth period. We meet everyday at lunch. Except Thursdays.”

“ _Every_ day?”

“Except Thursdays.”

Clarke sputters, following Lexa back into one of the aisles. “What! That’s insane, you can’t--”

Lexa whirls, stepping close, and Clarke’s words die in her throat. Lexa is taller than her, just by a few inches, and her frame is slighter, but she feels bigger. She looms. The shelves cast shadows across her face and leave her lips in stark relief, the flex of her jaw starkly illuminated. Clarke makes a strangled noise. 

“Halloween is in a twelve days. Can you handle ten lunches sacrificed, in exchange for whatever your parents have taken away?”

“How--how did you--”

Lexa scoffs. “Please. Are you in or are you out?”

“In,” Clarke says, and then, ridiculously, sticks her hand between them to be shaken.

Lexa looks at it. She looks at Clarke. “Every day except Thursdays,” she reminds her, and turns away.

++

Clarke harasses the office administrators until the assistant principal emerges to scrawl a note that she’s officially a club member, slap a stamp on it, and tell her to go away. She buys Octavia a chocolate malt cup at the convenience store across the street and uses it as a bribe for a ride home.

She decorates the note with glitter glue pens and the stickers her mother always has in her pockets because she forgets to take them out before she goes home, from shifts on pediatrics. Leaves it prominently displayed on the fridge before raiding last night’s leftovers for a snack.

++

“Lexa,” she announces, bursting dramatically through the basement door and stomping her way down the stairs. “I’m in a good fucking mood today.”

Lexa is sitting on a stool, pouring over what looks like blueprints of the city. She looks up at Clarke’s arrival. “You came.”

Clarke frowns. “There’s no need to sound so surprised.”

Lexa shrugs. “Come here and look at this.” She shuffles the papers, tucking away the one she was looking at to pull up a series of photographs. “Do you know this house?”

Clarke peers at the first picture, Lexa’s finger tapping against it. “Everyone knows that house. Creepy.”

“Mm,” Lexa agrees. She produces another photograph. “Five years ago, on Halloween, Jack Julius shot his wife and two daughters to death before committing suicide.”

“Everyone knows,” Clarke repeats, rolling her eyes. “You wanna run up to the door and touch it for five seconds to prove you’re not a scaredy cat? Because some of us completed that in middle school.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going inside the house.”

Clarke thinks about it. She shrugs. “Halloween night? Sounds fun, I guess. Classic.”

“I’ve been planning this for a long time,” Lexa informs her, shuffling through her papers and tracing things with her fingertip while she explains her plan. “Halloween is on a Friday this year. I’m going in Thursday, through the kitchen door, here. Setting up in the bedrooms, the living room--” she taps each room as she lists it, the floorplan to the house stretched out in front of her. “I don’t have enough equipment to do every room, so I’m focusing on where the murders actually happened. Master bedroom, kid’s room, living room.”

Clarke pokes at a mess of wires on the workbench behind her, spinning on the second stool. “What’s all this?”

Lexa bats at her hands. “Don’t touch that, I can’t afford to replace it on short notice.”

Clarke shifts her nosiness to the notebooks beside the tools, wires, and various blinky bits of electronics. The pages are worn, hand drawn sketches and schematics. “You built all of this?”

“Some. Mostly modifications.” Lexa points at the far wall. “I bribed the AV club and the props manager of the theater program for storage crates, padding, the dolly. I need you to wrap each item on the list and put it in the correct box. Cut into the foam to make room.” She rips four sheets of paper out of the notebook and passes them over. “The list, the schematic of how each should be packed and where.”

“That’s it?”

Lexa has turned to the computer, doublechecking a spreadsheet against yet another list in her notebook. “You ask for manual labor, you receive manual labor.”

“I didn’t ask,” Clarke mutters, but she sighs and starts to try and decipher Lexa’s neat but incredibly detailed instructions.

The bell rings before she’s gotten through just three items. “Fuck,” she says, swinging her bookbag over her shoulder. “Are you sure we can finish everything in time?”

Lexa packs up her own things. “The first ten or so are time intensive, the rest will go quickly.” She stops. “Did you eat?”

Clarke has one foot on the first stair. “What?”

“Did you eat before you came?”

“I forgot,” Clarke admits. “I didn’t want to be late on my first day.”

“Hm,” is all Lexa has to say. She lets Clarke leave in front of her and locks the door behind them. “You should hurry. Physics is on the other side of campus.”

“Right,” Clarke agrees. “Where are you headed?”

“Econ.”

They fall into step with each other, the rest of the kids swirling around them, towards their own classes. “Why do you even have a key to the basement? I can’t believe they’re letting students in there unsupervised.”

“Mr. G loaned me the key,” Lexa says. “He’s a family friend. That and an academic career of building trust with authority figures… it’s enough.” She turns down a hallway and into a classroom without another word.

“Oookay,” Clarke says to herself. “Bye then.”

++

On the second day, Lexa buys her a veggie wrap. It’s waiting, neatly sliced in half on a paper plate, next to the list and the instructions. An apple, already cut up, is arranged around it. “Oh,” Clarke says. “Thank you?”

Lexa shrugs. She turns around in her chair, shoulders hunched up. They don’t speak again until the bell rings.

++

“This is not what your father and I meant,” Abby says, ambushing Clarke in the middle of meatloaf. She places the club roster on the table. “And why did the registrar talk about you in that tone?”

Clarke opens her mouth, showing the half-chewed food. She swallows while her mother is grimacing. “You said join an extracurricular. You didn’t say it had to be boring.”

“It was implied,” her mother snaps, and then: “They’re not _all_ boring. I was in Future Physicians for America, and it was fun! We dissected a cat.”

Her father gives Abby a second helping of mashed potatoes. “I’m not sure you’re making the point you think you are, honey.”

“Gross,” Clarke agrees. “I’m in a club obsessed with an actual serial killer and your club sounds creepier.”

“You have to have gaps between each murder to be considered a serial killer.”

Clarke turns to her father. “You’re going to end up on the news.”

“I think it’s cute.” Jake kisses Abby on the temple. “Tell me you’ll smother me in my sleep if I don’t do the dishes tonight.”

Her mother eats a green bean. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d poison you slowly, over time. Make sure it doesn’t show up in the toxicology reports.” Her father wiggles his eyebrows and leans in for a kiss.

Clarke sighs.

++

On the third day, Lexa tells Clarke her mother is right.

“I’ve seen him classified as a spree killer, but a more accurate label would be a family annihilator. To be a spree killer, you--”

“Sorry,” Clarke says, cutting her off. “But if we’re going to be friends you can’t ever agree with my mother. Think of it as a rule, you like those.”

“Clarke,” Lexa says patiently, “I’m currently planning to break into private property and trespass overnight, with illegal and unstable equipment.”

Clarke looks at the piece of electronics she’s holding in alarm. “Unstable?”

The bell rings. Lexa picks up her bookbag. “And we’re not friends.”

++

“Raven’s parents are out of town,” Octavia tells her, pitched low under the rumble of the video. At her desk, their english teacher taps away at her phone, attention completely diverted. “She wants us there at seven to help set up. Bring liquor and wear something slutty.”

Clarke doodles in the margins of her empty video review. “I always do.”

++

“What do you think?” Clarke asks Lexa on the fourth day. “Slutty cop or slutty doctor?”

“Slutty suffragette,” Lexa suggests. “Really let that feminism hit home.”

Clarke flips her the bird. She’s working on cords and cables now, winding them carefully up into neat coils and securing them with twist-ties, nibbling at the turkey sandwich Lexa had provided. “You only need me after school Thursday, right? Nothing on Friday?”

“Right,” Lexa agrees. “But Thursday night, not just after school. I have to get the car.”

Clarke furrows her brow. “But… the school will be closed then.”

Lexa waves a hand dismissively. “Minor obstacle.”

“Minor--it’s felony burglary!”

Lexa scoffs. “Don’t be dramatic Clarke, it’s not a felony.” She comes to check Clarke’s work. “Good. You’ll be done tomorrow, I think.” She taps one of the coils. “Redo this one? It needs to be a tighter curl.”

Clarke sighs. She undoes the tie and starts again.

++

On the fifth day, Clarke is bored as fuck. “Tell me about why you’re into ghosts.”

Lexa has been testing video cameras for almost twenty minutes, and she doesn’t bother looking up. “Because they haven’t been proven.”

“So you… quit the model UN and moved to the basement.”

Lexa turns on her stool. “Why do you want to know?”

“Well, I am sort of… an accomplice. And technically, part of the club.” Clarke fiddles with the handle of a storage case.

Lexa stares at her.

“Fine, I’m nosy as hell. Will you tell me or not?”

“Not,” Lexa says, and that effectively ends the conversation.

++

On the sixth day, Clarke is finished. Lexa double checks her work, then triple checks. “Good enough,” she pronounces. “You can go.”

“Oh. Okay.” Clarke lingers by the table. “What’re you doing?”

Lexa sighs, dropping her notebook. “Nothing. Everything is ready.” She scowls.

Clarke fidgets. “Do you wanna cut next period and go get pancakes? There’s an iHop down the street.”

Lexa stares at her. “I have perfect attendance.”

“That’s an even better reason to cut, are you kidding me? No one should graduate with perfect attendance.”

Lexa wavers. “I… shouldn’t.”

“Right,” Clarke says, “which is why you should. Call it a practice run for the breaking and entering, the trespassing, the et cetera.”

Lexa opens her laptop. “Go away, Clarke.”

++

On the seventh day, Clarke skips the first half of the day, arriving to the basement during the lunch period. “I come bearing pancakes,” she announces.

Lexa sighs. 

“Think of it this way,” Clarke says, starting to clear a space on the table as Lexa dives to rescue her papers and tools from Clarke’s sweeping arm. “I’m going to be an accomplice to your stuff, and by eating these, you’re an accomplice to me skipping class. Quid pro quo.”

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Lexa mutters, but she takes the styrofoam container Clarke passes over.

“I looked you up,” Clarke says, squeezing syrup out of the little packet before passing it to Lexa. “I mean, I checked old yearbooks. You never said you’re an athlete.”

“You never said you’re an artist.” Lexa smirks at Clarke’s surprise. “You think you’re the only one with a yearbook? It’s included in the student body fee. Everyone gets one.”

“Your stats are impressive.” Clarke stuffs a bite in her mouth. “I assume. They didn’t actually include them.”

Lexa applies syrup to her pancakes. “They only collect statistics for the boys teams. Are you applying to art schools?”

Clarke drags her fork through the syrups, the butter all melted and runny. “Maybe. I don’t know. What about you?”

“Forensics and criminal justice. I’ve already sent in the applications.”

“Did you include this club in the extracurriculars?”

Lexa cuts her a look. “Of course not. And neither should you, whatever agreement you have with your parents aside.”

“My mom wants me to go to medical school. It’s why I did AP Bio as a freshman.” Clarke makes a face. “I smelled like formaldehyde for winter formal.”

“I’m going to join the FBI,” Lexa says. It’s the first time she’s ever volunteered anything, so Clarke gives her last of the strawberry topping.

++

On the eighth day, Clarke has lunch with Octavia. She bribes Raven with a cupcake to get Lexa’s number and texts her every iteration of the ghost emoji she can get her hands on.

Just before the bell rings, her phone buzzes: a tiny pancake emoji. Clarke saves it as the icon for Lexa’s number.

++

“So,” Clarke says on the ninth day, flopping next to Lexa on the empty stool that she suspects but can’t confirm Lexa procured just for her. Lexa, she notices, is eating pancakes. “What did you do yesterday on the secret no Clarke day?”

“Experience peace and quiet.”

Clarke leans her chin on Lexa’s arm and makes big sad eyes. “That hurts my delicate feelings.”

Lexa’s lips twitch up. “You’ll live.” She shoves Clarke’s head off, but gently. “You don’t have to stick around today. Just show up at my house tomorrow, around nine.”

Clarke shrugs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You certainly are,” Lexa mutters. She taps her fingers on the table. Everything has been cleaned and tidied and packed away, and there’s clearly nothing to distract herself with.

“Feeling antsy?” 

Lexa shrugs.

“Hey,” Clarke says. “Tell me about the house? The case?”

Lexa tosses her a frown. “Why? No.”

“C’mon. It’ll help you be prepared, and I’m curious on what I’ve been working on.”

Lexa regards her for a moment. “Alright. Hold on.” She crosses to a filing cabinet, fishing out a large accordion folder. “I have slides but the projector bulb is blown out.” They bend over the file together, Lexa pulling out papers and pictures and laying them out. “This is Jonathan ‘Jack’ Julius. Graduated from this high school ten years ago. Married Kathy Gurol three months later, their first daughter, Kelly, born five months after that.”

“Oops,” Clarke says. “I guess they didn’t pay close attention to human sexuality and development.” The unit consists of one video, made in the late seventies, about periods and wet dreams and the importance of deodorant.

Lexa snorts in agreement. She retrieves another photograph. “This is the house after they bought it cheap from Kelly’s father.”

Clarke touches it. “Wow. I forgot what it used to look like.” It’s shocking--Clarke knows the house, everyone knows the house, but the picture looks… like a normal house. Flowers in the front yard, trimmed grass lawn, pretty blue paint with white accents. “Geez. That’s sad as fuck.”

“Not as sad as this.” Lexa draws her attention to another photo. It’s a kindergarten class photo. “That’s Kelly, in the red dress. Picture day was a week before she was murdered.”

Clarke touches the tiny face with her fingertip. Kelly’s got dark hair, plaited, chubby baby cheeks. She’s wearing long socks and shoes with a buckle. Clarke had a pair that looked just like that. She knows because her kindergarten picture, with that same black board and white lettering spelling out the grade and the name of the teacher, the kids in the same poses, is still on the mantle at home. “Oh.”

Lexa hands her another picture. Kelly sitting on a couch with floral fabric, an infant swaddled in her lap. “Grace-Lynn Julius. Just home from the hospital for a month. Kathy was still on maternity leave when…”

“Jesus,” Clarke mutters. 

“Everyone knows the story,” Lexa says. The next few papers are copies of newspaper articles, online blogs, snapshots of local news outlets. “Jack had a lot of debt. Couldn’t keep down a job that wasn’t part time and minimum wage. Ended up at the restaurant Kathy’s family owned because no one else would keep him on. Even so, wasn’t enough. They were going to lose the car, the house. Couldn’t pay off the hospital bills from the second delivery--Grace was premature and required an extra week of care.”

“He could have done something else. Anything else.”

Lexa takes the pictures out of her hands. “Of course, Clarke. I’m not making excuses. I’m just telling you the story.”

“Right,” Clarke mutters. “Sorry, I know.”

“There were reports of drinking, arguments. They were supposed to attend a family gathering on Halloween, Kathy’s family. When they didn’t show to that or work the next day, her mother called. After another day, her father went to the house, found the bodies.”

Lexa hesitates. “I… have crime scene photos.”

“Pass,” Clarke says immediately. “Hard pass, I could not pass harder on that offer.”

Lexa tucks everything back into the folder. “It didn’t take long to piece it all together. Fingerprints, gun powder residue, his family didn’t even attempt to defend him. They’re buried over on Santa Clara.” She hesitates. “With my parents.”

Clarke touches her arm. “Lexa...”

“I saw the tombstones there. My uncle used to take me all the time. My sister taught me subtraction with the dates. So I looked them up, read about the case. This year, the fifth anniversary… feels like a round number.”

Clarke thinks about a very young Lexa, sitting at her parents graves and counting on her fingers all the years they lived and the years since she’s seen them. “I’m sorry. About your parents, I mean.”

“It was a long time ago.” Very slightly, Lexa leans into her touch. “My uncle has been very good to me.” She swallows, her throat working, her lashes fluttering. “It was a long time ago.” She looks down at Clarke, not moving away. “Thank you.”

She bends, a gentle inclination of her head. Her breath smells like maple syrup. Her lips move when she swallows, pursing slightly and relaxing again. Clarke, every so slightly, goes up on her toes. Her eyes close.

The bell rings.

They jump apart. Clarke can feel her face heat up, and there’s a similar flush rising high on Lexa’s cheeks. “That’s--that’s the worst story anyone has ever told me,” Clarke manages. She coughs, stepping farther away. “I wholeheartedly regret asking.”

“That’s the foundation,” Lexa says. “It’s why it’s tragic, not why it’s interesting.”

Clarke watches Lexa tuck the file back into the drawer. “So. Uh. I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

Lexa closes the drawer with a snap. “I’ll text you my address.”

++

“I’m going to Raven’s tomorrow,” she tells her parents at dinner. “Sleepover to help her get ready for the party on Friday. We’re going costume shopping after school.”

Her mother frowns. “That was a lot of information offered on your part.”

“I’ve turned over a new leaf,” Clarke says earnestly. “I think the paranormal club has really made me consider things from your point of view.”

Her mother rolls her eyes. “Keep your phone on. And make sure it’s okay with your father.”

Clarke looks at her father. He gives her a thumbs up. Her mother makes them all eat another helping of lima beans.

++

Clarke eats lunch with Octavia and Raven, because she’s a coward. “I said I’m staying at yours tonight,” she tells Raven. “Back me up if my parents check in?”

Raven fistbumps her. “You got it. Still on for the party?”

“Tits out and bottoms up,” Clarke agrees. “Hey,” she says, pitching her voice low. “You ever heard of like… people getting turned on by murder stories? Like they wouldn’t usually be into someone, but--”

Raven holds up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you there, because this is quickly veering into insight I have absolutely no interest in having.”

“Whatever,” Clarke mutters. “It was probably the pancakes, all… syrupy.”

Raven grimaces. “That’s actually somehow worse.”

++

She does go costume shopping after school, because she doesn’t actually enjoy lying to her parents and because she’s got time to kill before meeting Lexa. Halfheartedly cheers on Octavia in the dressing room and picks out something generic for herself, her mind elsewhere.

“So,” Octavia says, while they’re sitting inside a Taco Bell. “You and Lexa Woods.”

Clarke chokes on a chicken quesadilla. “Me and…. Who? Lexa? I don’t…” she gives it up. “What about us?”

“Everyone’s noticed. You’re finally gossip in a good way, not ‘kneed the substitute in the groin’ way.”

“That was cool,” Clarke protests. “They didn’t even suspend me for it.”

“He was eighty five years old, Clarke. He probably broke something falling over.”

“He had wandering hands,” Clarke says, “and I should have gotten a medal for it.”

Octavia flicks a nacho at her forehead. “Lexa Woods.”

“It’s just a club,” Clarke mutters, suddenly very concerned with tucking the chicken back into the tortilla. “She’s okay, I guess.”

“Mmhm.” Octavia scoops the chip off the table, blows on it, and eats it. “And I’m dropping you at her house, for no particular reason, except you’re also spending the night.”

“Uh,” Clarke says. “Friendship reasons?”

Octavia throws another nacho at her.

++

Clarke waves at Octavia as she drives away, then takes a deep breath. Her backpack is lumpy on her back, clean clothes and toiletries and a couple of bags of chips stuffed in, her school things left behind in the backseat of Octavia’s car.

She raps at the door, fiddling with her phone, shooting Lexa a quick text. It swings open, revealing an older girl with striking features and a glare that could cut glass. “Who’re you?”

“Clarke. I’m--is this--Lexa?”

Lexa appears over the girl’s shoulder. “Go away Anya, I told you she was coming.” She tugs at Anya’s elbow.

Anya doesn’t budge, her grip on the doorjam tightening. Her glare has gone slightly interested instead of overtly hostile. “You’re Clarke? Lexa talks about you.”

“Really? What does she say?”

“That--” Anya starts, but Lexa’s hand slaps over her mouth and she tugs Anya backwards. They tussle in the doorway for a moment, before Anya jerks free with a grin. “Okay, okay. I’m headed out anyway. Don’t wreck my car and call me once in awhile so I know you’re alive?”

“Whatever,” Lexa mutters, looking sullen. She kicks at the back of Anya’s heel and dodges the retaliatory swat. “My sister,” she tells Clarke, when Anya has rounded the corner, headed for the bus stop. “She’s agreed to let me use her car while she’s out of town for the weekend.”

“And… you talk about me?”

Lexa pinks, averting her eyes. “You’re the only other person in my club. It’s completely reasonable that you would come up in casual conversation.”

Clarke grins. “You’re cute when you’re flustered. Can I come in or what?”

“Or what,” Lexa says, but she steps back. “We should leave in about twenty minutes. Did you eat?”

Clarke fumbles at her bag. “I brought you a burrito.” She produces it, in the Taco Bell wrapping, greasy and cold.

“No,” Lexa says, and drags Clarke into the kitchen for sandwiches and fruit cups.

++

“This is not what I expected from the captain of the field hockey team,” Clarke admits, crouched in the lookout position while Lexa picks the lock on the gate to the parking lot. 

“I have a 5.0 GPA,” Lexa informs her. “Don’t reduce me to my body.” While Clarke is sputtering through a response to that, she gives her wrist a last twist and the lock falls open. “I’ll back in and pop the trunk, you go get the first of the boxes from the basement.” She hands Clarke the key. 

 

It takes about fifteen minutes to carry everything up from the basement, relock it, load the car, leave it idling across the street with the headlights turned off, and put the padlock back on the gate to the parking lot. 

Lexa makes Clarke drink one of the water bottles she’d brought before she drives away. “You’re lingering after a crime,” Clarke informs her, between long draws. “It’s not the smartest thing for a criminal to do.”

“Dehydration is the real crime,” Lexa says. “And it never pays.”

 

Clarke watches Lexa drive; the grip of her long fingers on the wheel, the flick of her eyes in the mirror. “You were fucking with me,” she realizes. “Was… was that you flirting?”

Lexa looks sideways at her, for a long dragging moment. “Perhaps.”

“Maybe yes,” Clarke hums, “maybe no?”

Lexa smiles. “Maybe.”

Clarke settles into the passenger seat. “You should try for maybe yes sometime. Perhaps I’ll maybe back.”

Lexa hands her another bottle of water. Clarke is still giggling when they arrive.

++

Clarke looks at the house in the headlights before Lexa turns the engine off, then the dim glow of the streetlights. It looks like it could have been any other house, on a corner with a small front yard and a park just across an intersection. The house next door provides a striking contrast to its boarded up windows and decrepit roof, the overgrown yard and the rotting front porch, the dead tree and the frayed remnants of a tire swing.

“Fuck,” she mutters. 

Lexa’s hand is on the gearshift, and Clarke grips her wrist, suddenly swamped with dread. Lexa turns their palms up, Clarke’s atop hers, her fingers gently curved. “Are you afraid?”

Clarke sets her shoulders. “No.” The door creaks when she shoves it open. Clarke bends over to look at Lexa, still seated. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”

 

Lexa breaks in through the back door, the gate in the fence rotted through that she puts her boot through it with barely a noise. The back door is a little bit more difficult, Lexa grunting with her foot braced on the wall and both hands around a crowbar. 

She pauses and wipes at her forehead. “Some help?”

Clarke shrugs. “I’m enjoying the show, to be honest.”

Lexa cuts her a look. Clarke sighs, then comes up behind Lexa, their hands wrapped around the crowbar together, Lexa’s back against Clarke’s chest. The board gives way with a crack and they tumble backwards at the sudden release of pressure, Clarke sprawled on the ground with Lexa atop her. Clarke groans. “This is not how I usually end up on my back.”

Lexa elbows her as she gets up. “Start getting the stuff out of the car.”

++

“So are you going to show me how to work this stuff?”

“It’s mostly automatic,” Lexa says, adjusting the first portable generator along the wall. “Since it’s just me, everything needs to be recording without manual input.” She points at one of the boxes. “That goes in the master bedroom. End of the hall.”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, “if you think I’m going anywhere alone in this house you’re fucking nuts.”

 

The house smells like mold, and wet wood, and old rotting fabrics. And dust. A fuckton of dust. Clarke sneezes sixteen times on the way to the master bedroom, and Lexa says “bless you” after each sneeze, in the split second between it and the next. “Thanks,” Clarke mutters, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Allergies.”

“This is it,” Lexa says, nudging a door open. 

“Oh,” Clarke says, because the bed is still there, stripped of linens, the frame half collapsed. There’s a dark stain on the mattress she is carefully not looking at. “Right,” she mutters, quickly bending and unpacking the case. “Where do I put the blinky things?”

Lexa takes it from her, quickly. “I’ll… handle these. Just wait a second? The other bedroom, and then you can go.”

“Right,” Clarke repeats. She shifts on her feet near the door, listening to the floor creak under her weight. She can hear the wind through the leaves on the ground outside, the distant shrieking of young people partying. 

“Okay,” Lexa says. “Come on.”

++

Clarke lingers by the backdoor. “You… you sure you’re okay?”

Lexa is sitting, legs crossed, against the living room wall. Everything has been set up and plugged in and is waiting to be powered on. Lexa did a test run for about fifteen minutes, to make sure everything was working and to ‘take baseline readings’. Then she clicked on a camping light, unrolled her sleeping bag, and fished out a book from her backpack.

“Consider your obligations fulfilled,” she agrees. She holds out Anya’s keys. “You’re spending the night with Octavia?”

“That was the plan,” Clarke says. She drags the toe of her sneaker through the dirt on the floor. “You sure you’re not scared?”

“I ain’t scared of no ghosts,” Lexa deadpans at her. She takes out several small tupperwares from her bag, cracking them open to reveal cut up veggies, dip, a stack of pringles, a handful of cookies. “You could stay.” She shrugs a shoulder, painfully nonchalant. “If you’d like.”

Clarke looks out the back door at Anya’s car parked across the street. “Well. If you died in here I’d probably be pegged for it, so.” She flops next to Lexa’s side. “I want cookies,” she demands, and Lexa passes them over. “What’re you reading?”

Lexa shows her. Some kind of anthology on gruesome crimes. Clarke makes a face and tucks it under the sleeping bag. “Nope.” 

Lexa reaches over and brushes a crumb away from the corner of Clarke’s mouth with her thumb. “I suppose we’ll have to keep ourselves entertained some other way.”

++

“Clarke,” Lexa says, “this is ridiculous.”

“Shhh, this one is for the win.”

Lexa rolls her eyes. “I’m winning by fifty seven points.”

“Shut up,” Clarke suggests, “and open your mouth.” She lines up her shot, tossing a carrot at Lexa’s open mouth. It bounces off her cheek and Lexa catches it.

“My turn.”

Annoyingly, her light toss lands right on Clarke’s tongue, just like the seven previous times. Clarke spits it out onto the floor to be petulant, and because it makes Lexa laugh. “Okay, ringtoss is done,” Clarke mutters. “You got any apple slices left? We could drop them in your water bottle and bob for them.”

“Veto,” Lexa says. “What other games you got?”

“Uhhh,” Clarke says. “Charades?”

Lexa fishes under the sleeping bag for her book. Clarke lunges, tackling Lexa onto her back and sprawling across her torso. “Oof,” Lexa grunts, hands flailing as she topples. “Clarke--”

“Ssh,” Clarke says. “Sleep time, not murder time. Tell me a story.”

Lexa sighs. Her hand floats in the hair for a moment, uncertain, before settling carefully on Clarke’s head, her fingers gently smoothing Clarke’s hair. She starts telling Clarke about the history of seeing apparitions on the inside of closed eyelids, which is approximately five thousand times more boring than Clarke thought it would be, and she assumed it’d be boring as fuck all.

++

“Clarke,” Lexa murmurs, sleep rough and against the back of Clarke’s neck. “Wake up.”

“I’ll cut you,” Clarke mumbles. “Five more minutes.”

“You’re going to be late to school.”

Clarke’s eyes snap open. “Fuck. Fuck.” She sits up, grimacing at the taste of sleep in her mouth and the slow focusing of her eyes. “We fell asleep.”

Lexa looks apologetic, even sleep mussed and groggy as she is. “I meant to wake you. Sorry.”

“You should be,” Clarke mutters, “that was the most boring story of all time.”

“It was _history_ ,” Lexa says. She digs out a package of wet wipes and tosses them so they hit Clarke on the nose. “Take Anya’s car, pick me up tomorrow?”

Clarke scrambles to her feet, feeling grimy and gritty and achy from a night out of her own bed. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

“Yes.” Lexa stands, rocking up on her toes for a full body stretch. Her back cracks and she sighs, her shirt riding up as she pops her shoulders. “Go to school, Clarke, you’re going to be late.”

++

“Hey.”

Clarke jerks back to earth. “Hey. Sorry. What?”

Raven arches an eyebrow. “You’ve been zoned out all day. And, to be honest, you smell super weird. Go use my shower and change into your costume.”

 

Clarke showers. She conditions twice and shaves her legs. Blowdries her hair and puts her makeup on, her cute underwear, her costume. Then she raids Raven’s pantry for snacks and Raven’s fridge for soda and gets into Anya’s car. Points it towards Lexa and drives.

++

Her heels sink into the mud of the backyard and stick there, which is odd because Clarke doesn’t remember hearing the rain last night, or any dampness on the concrete when she left. She walks in her stockings, tip toed, up to the house, yanking the door open with a jerk and poking her head inside. “Lexa?”

The house is dark and yawning open, silent except for the odd slow creak.

Clarke slips inside. The door shuts behind her and she waits, blinking rapidly, for her eyes to adjust. She can see Lexa’s bag on the kitchen counter, and as she creeps through the living room, the sleeping bag where they spent the night, Lexa’s backpack against the wall. “Lexa?”

She walks down the hall, stopping to peek into the bathroom. The master bedroom is empty and unchanged, except for Lexa’s footprints left in the dust and Clarke’s as she wanders. She turns to go back down the hall and--

And it’s crazy, it is. Clarke knows about the brain and the ways it can be tricked and she understands how flickers of light and moving shapes can--she gets it. But she thinks, for a second, there’s a girl with pigtails and a red dress and buckle shoes standing in the doorway with big sad eyes and a teddy bear dangling from one hand and the red ugly mangled mess of what’s left of her chest.

Then Lexa’s hand closes around her wrist. “Clarke?” she asks, confused, and Clarke blacks out.

++

She wakes up on the sleeping bag. Lexa is leaning over her, worried. The living room looks brighter, louder, the hum of the portable generators and the light whirring of Lexa’s equipment, the brightness of her laptop and the camping lights. “Easy,” Lexa says, helping her sit up and lean against the wall. “Drink this.” She holds the water bottle to Clarke’s lips, a plastic straw sticking out.

“More water,” Clarke grumbles. “And no swooning jokes. Your stupid ghost stories got into my head.”

“Hmm,” Lexa says, suspiciously neutral. Clarke narrows her eyes.

“Spill.”

“A huge spike,” Lexa says, so fast she must have been dying to let it out. “On every machine. I knew it. I _knew_ it.” She pulls her laptop into her lap, the jagged line graphs displayed.

“Why?” Clarke asks. “And I mean this, yeah but. But I want to know _why_?”

Lexa tears her eyes away from her readings. “And if I tell you?”

“I’ll tell you. What I saw.”

Lexa considers her offer. She nods, once. “Drink the water.” She waits until Clarke sips again before continuing. “This tragedy, Clarke. It happened five years ago. We were both old enough to remember it. This house is on a nice street in a nice neighborhood. The family was picture perfect, whitebread, well connected. But everyone just--forgot. This happened five years ago, Clarke, and everyone acts like it was five hundred. No one cares. No one remembers. They just boarded it up and flipped the swingset across the street to face the other way.”

Clarke touches her, gentle. “You care.”

“Yes,” Lexa murmurs. She’s looking at Clarke’s fingers on her wrist. “I care.”

 

Clarke tells her. Lexa is quiet for a long time. Then she smiles, the biggest smile Clarke’s ever seen on her, even with her eyes wet and her breathing shuddery. 

++

Lexa shows her each piece of equipment. Tells her where she got the parts and how long it’s taken her to build it and how Anya threatened to make her a ghost if she even thought about dipping into her college fund. All the crap jobs Lexa picked up around the neighborhood and all the times she burned all the hair off her arms soldering things together.

There’s a minor wire short in something and Lexa shows Clarke how to fix it, her long fingers around the handles of a pair of pliers, then around Clarke’s hands, guiding her. The wire sparks, the machine hums. Lexa smiles. 

Clarke is easing her hands out, reaching for the plastic casing to snap back into place. Lexa stays very close. “I like your costume.”

Clarke looks down at herself. She flushes. “I brought snacks,” she says. “Those soft cookies with the frosting? And coke. The drink, not the drug.”

“Mhhm,” Lexa agrees. She noses behind Clarke’s ear. “I googled party games on my phone after you left. In case you came back.”

Clarke lays a hand on Lexa’s waist, tugging her closer. “If you say murder mystery I’m leaving.”

“No promises,” Lexa says. “You knew what you were getting into.” She kisses Clarke, careful and easy and so so gentle. 

When it breaks Clarke is breathing harder, her hand on the small of Lexa’s back. “I nominate myself Vice President,” she pants, and drags Lexa to the sleeping bag.

++

“Clarke,” her mother says at dinner. “The school called about you cutting first period on Thursday.”

“Overslept,” Clarke says. “Sorry.”

“Of course,” her mother says, nodding. In hindsight, that should have been Clarke’s first warning.

“How was the party?” Her father asks. “I’m surprised to see you back before the weekend’s over.

Clarke shrugs. “Sunday’s a school night. You know how responsible and academically oriented I am.”

Her father winks. “Good job kiddo.”

“Clarke,” her mother says. “The police called about you trespassing at the old Julius house on Friday.”

“Uhhh,” Clarke says. “I’m gay?”

“That’s nice,” her mother says. “You’re grounded forever.”

Her father winks at her again. “We’re selling the car for scrap. No sleepovers until you graduate college.”

++

Anya buys a motorcycle and gives her car to Lexa. Clarke rides shotgun; holds the EMF meter in one hand and Lexa’s hand in the other.


	2. the future is ours (so lets plan it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghost AU, modern AU, happy ending.
> 
> Lexa is a ghost. Clarke moves into her house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta-ed, please excuse careless errors as I'm positive I made them.

“I know I’m dead,” Anya says, hopping up onto the kitchen counter and sticking a noncorporeal hand through the closed microwave door. “But this is creepy, even for ghosts.”

Lexa refuses to look at her, continuing to concentrate carefully on whether her powers let her see through walls. “We’re ghosts, we’re supposed to be creepy.”

Anya flicks a kernel into the air, sticking out her tongue to watch it pass through and fall to the ground. “This sucks. It’s so boring. Someone cast me down into hell, what does it take to get a priest called.”

“Technically,” Lexa informs her,” the Catholic church no longer endorses exorcisms.”

“Technically,” Anya mimics in a high pitched tone, “my ass should be sinking through this counter, and yet…” She kicks her feet to demonstrate, and her heels thump against the wooden cabinet door. Lexa does look over then, and they both blink in surprise. The rest of the popcorn tumbles from Anya’s surprised hand.

“Hello?” Raven enters the kitchen, frowning. “Clarke?” She catches sight of the popcorn on the floor, a few remaining kernels on the counter, and sighs. She walks straight through Anya on her way to clean it up. “Who should clean the floor?” she asks herself, in faux questioning tone, sickly sweet and high octaved. “Should it be the girl with the crippled leg who doesn’t even live here? Sounds logical.”

“She sounds like you,” Lexa says. “Does this count as paranormal influence?”

Anya gives her the middle finger. “Go moon in your girlfriend’s room.”

++

Lexa doesn’t go into Clarke’s room. That would be creepy. She waits in the hallway.

++

Every morning, Clarke hits the snooze button four times. Then she curses her alarm clock and accuses it of not going off while she trips over herself, pulling on her pants while he hops down the hallway, hair still wet from the shower. She opens the fridge and makes a tragic noise when there’s nothing for her to grab for lunch, then curses when she catches sight of the clock on the oven, grabbing her keys off the counter and bolting out the door.

She comes home late sometimes. A drink with coworkers or a movie with friends or stopping to grab some takeout. Eats in front of the television or at the table on her phone or over the sink, swaying on exhausted legs. She drinks straight from the faucet when she thinks no one can see her.

Lexa can see her. Lexa can always see her. There’s no one else to watch.

++

“I feel like a golden retriever,” Anya says, sitting on the floor with Lexa, her legs crossed. She pokes at the remote, her hand passing through the plastic casing and sinking into the coffee table. She makes a face at the television. “Except people pay attention to golden retrievers.”

Lexa shrugs. “I like this show.” She grimaces, a hand pressed to her belly. “Fuck.”

“Again?” Anya presses her own hand over Lexa’s, the pressure just barely easing the agony into something manageable. Her voice goes soft. “Sorry, Lex. It’ll pass.”

Lexa grits her teeth. “Why doesn’t this ever happen to you?”

“Superior genes.”

Lexa makes a low noise, starting to hunch over. On the couch, Clarke laughs at the television. “We’re not even related.”

Anya’s hand rubs her back. “There’s no need to be hurtful.” She hesitates. “I know you don’t like it, but… you could go away, just for a bit.”

Lexa shakes her head. She takes a shuddery breath. “It’ll pass. It always passes.”

++

Anya likes it when Raven comes over; she’s always cheerier. Anya says it’s because Raven has better taste in movies. Lexa thinks it’s because Raven is just Anya’s type. “Hot?” Anya asks.

“Mean,” Lexa mutters. Anya rolls her eyes.

“She can’t see you sticking up for her.”

Lexa scowls at the ground. “Did you see what movies she brought?”

Anya crosses the room to poke at Raven’s bag, frowning with concentration as she exerts herself to move the contents around. “Looks like a horror marathon.”

Lexa pulls a face. “Your taste in women is horrendous.”

“Clarke sings Celine Dion in the shower _every morning_. We both hear it. The neighbors hear it. The beings in the dimension we’re probably supposed to be in hear it.”

Lexa hums, carefully neutral. She thinks it’s cute when Clarke tries to hit the high note. “Stop touching that before they notice.”

Behind them, in the kitchen, Raven and Clarke clink full bottles of wine together and click a stopwatch before high fiving and starting to chug. Anya casts Lexa a doubtful look.

“Clarke noticed when you ate all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms.”

Anya heaves a gusty sigh. “A feat I have never been able to replicate. Do you remember what they tasted like, Lexa?”

Lexa’s nose wrinkles. “Yes.”

Anya’s face goes dreamy, ignoring her. “Food, Lexa. Sugar dissolving on your tongue.”

Lexa’s stomach makes an uncomfortable twist. She hisses.

Anya’s face shifts from rapture to chagrin. “Sorry.”

Lexa leans against the wall, sliding down it. She presses her palms to her stomach and feels her own blood just like it’d been the first time, searing agony and the tingling in her feet. “Distract me?”

Anya comes to sit next to her and hold her hand. “I have a theory.”

“Oh?”

“On why I can--do things, sometimes. And you never can.”

“I’m sitting, aren’t I?”

“Oh yeah, not sinking through the floorboards, you win the ghost olympics.”

If Lexa wasn’t bleeding to death (again), she’d flip Anya the bird.

“Anyway,” Anya continues, “I can do things you can’t, and I know why.”

“The going away place,” Lexa murmurs.

“Mm. I’m stronger when I come back, and the longer I stay there…” Anya trails off, seeing Lexa’s face. She switches tacks. “It doesn’t--hurt. Not like this hurts you.”

“I like it here,” Lexa murmurs. Her head slumps down to Anya’s shoulder. “I don’t want to go.”

Anya’s hand on the back of her neck, rubbing while Lexa’s vision blacks out. “I don’t want you to either. But we’re not supposed to be here anymore.”

++

Lexa wakes up in Clarke’s bed. She feels groggy in the best way, tucked under the heavy comforter, her head on the pillow. And Clarke--Lexa exhales. The colors are brighter, the feel of the sheets on her skin sharper. “Clarke,” she says on a sigh.

Clarke’s eyes open. Her lashes flutter, her chest rises and falls. Lexa watches the sleep fade away and her gaze focus. Then Clarke screams, flailing backwards.

Lexa starts, badly, letting out a yelp of her own. She falls through the bed, the floor, and thumps down onto the kitchen table, flailing and flopping off, landing heavily on the floor. She groans. Footsteps thunder down the stairs, and Clarke appears, wielding a mop.

“You get out of my house!” Clarke holds the mop hand up, bedhead raging. “But--And--tell me how you got into my house!”

Lexa blinks at her. _You can see me_ is on the tip of her tongue, but interacting with Clarke has made her--she pauses in surprise. “You own a mop? And you keep it in your bedroom?”

“I--” Clarke blinks. Her voice raises in a half question. “Yes? It was a gift, and--and you’re a home intruder, and a _creep_ , climbing into bed with me--”

“I didn’t,” Lexa protests, staggering to her feet, she steps forward to walk through the table and yelps again as her hip bangs painfully against the edge. “I didn’t--I’ve never been in your bedroom, since you moved in.”

“Since I _moved in_?” 

“Uh,” Lexa says. She stands up straight and squares her shoulders, hands to forearms behind her back. “I’m a ghost.”

Clarke blinks six times in rapid succession. “Fuck you,” she concludes, and lunges with the mop.

Lexa vaults over the counter, putting it between them. “Stop that,” she snaps, irritated. 

Clarke edges towards the back door. “I’m calling the police.”

“Why,” Lexa says, too annoyed and surprised and confused to structure her thoughts and articulate them. She advances past the counter, lip curled. “This is _my_ house. You think you can just move in with your ugly shower curtains and your dead cactus and leave a check under the mat every month? I _built_ this house. I bled for it; I died in it. _You_ are the trespasser.”

She’s breathing hard, her fists clenched, her pulse heavy in her temples. The kitchen cabinet doors slammed open during her furious words; three plates fell and cracked into shards on the tiled floor.

Clarke retreats half a step before steadying herself. “I…” she swallows, her eyes flicking around the light carnage. “You fell through the floor, I--” She pauses. “My cactus is dead?”

Lexa sighs, her anger draining away as quickly as it’d come. “It’s been dead for six months.”

Clarke lets the mop drop to the floor. “I’ve been watering it every day!”

“That’s why it died,” Lexa informs her, attempting to keep judgment out of her tone.

Clarke glares. “Is that how you died? Someone forgot to water you?”

“That’s not even why your cactus died, it’s the opposite, I _just_ explained it.”

“Whatever,” Clarke mutters. Her arms cross across her chest. “So, what? You just haunt my house?”

“Anya and I never go into your bedroom,” Lexa assures her.

“Who the fuck--there's _two_ ghosts in my house?”

Lexa shrugs. “Surprise?”

Clarke’s eyes dart around the room. “Is she here now?”

“No.”

“What? Why? Where--where do you go when you’re not here?”

Lexa feels her eyes go drifty. “Away.”

 

The next thing she knows Clarke’s face is very close, her brow furrowed. “Hey?”

Lexa snaps back to reality. “Yes?”

“You uh. You went kind of... see through.”

Lexa swallows. “Oh. Sorry.”

Clarke shrugs, stepping back. “I guess I shouldn’t worry about you, right? It’s not like you can die again.” She pauses, worry crossing her face. “Or is it like in Ghost? With the weird lights and the demons.”

It’s Lexa’s turn to be confused. “Ghost?”

“You’ve never seen Ghost? It’s a classic!” Clarke starts to bound forward, then stops. “Wait, did you die before Ghost? Are you a hundred years old?”

Lexa makes an offended noise. “Do I look a hundred years old?”

Clarke looks her up and down. “You don’t look like the epitome of fashion.”

Lexa’s offended noise gets louder. “It’s not like my murderer let me change before he killed me! I didn’t know I’d be stuck in this.”

Clarke holds up her hands, placating. “It’s not that bad,” she offers. “I mean. You look good, actually?” She looks Lexa up and down again, slower, lashes lowered. “Unless the back of your head is all blown away like that guy in Sixth Sense.”

“Sixth Sense,” Lexa repeats, lost again.

“You are a tragic ghost,” Clarke informs her. “You know nothing about your own people.”

Lexa remembers innumerous times of defending Clarke’s movie taste to Anya. She regrets all of them. She opens her mouth to argue and doubles over instead. She stumbles, catching herself on the table and easing herself to the floor. “It’s alright,” she gasps, hand outstretched to keep Clarke at bay.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I know.” Lexa lays on her back, trying to take deep breaths. “It’ll pass.” Sweat breaks out on her hairline, her eyes slip shut as she struggles to inhale, hold, exhale. 

A hand slides into hers, pressed to her wound. “You’ve been shot.” Clarke gently moves her palms out the way, peels her shirt away and uses the hem of her own to wipe some of the blood away, get a good look at it. “I didn’t know ghosts could bleed.”

“Sorry,” Lexa murmurs. Her toes are tingling, the tips of her fingers. “It’ll pass.”

Clarke lifts her, settles Lexa’s shoulders into her lap. “I’m a doctor, you know.”

Lexa stares at the ceiling, Clarke’s face in and out of her view. “I know.”

“I’d offer first aid, but I guess…”

Lexa exhales. “I’m already dead.”

Clarke’s hand slides out of hers, slippery with blood. She probes at the injury. “So you were shot, huh?”

Lexa opens one eye to give her a look.

“Sorry. Bad memory?”

“It’d be better,” Lexa manages, “if it didn’t keep happening.”

“It’s bad,” Clarke admits. “It’s--you must have bled out, I think.”

“Yes,” Lexa says, and then, because it seems like the polite thing to do: “My name is Lexa.”

“Lexa,” Clarke repeats. She hesitates. “Were you alone? When you died?”

“Yes,” Lexa says.

Clarke grips her hand again. “Not this time.”

++

They clean up the blood together, hands and knees and soap suds up to their elbows. They’re using pots because Clarke doesn’t own a bucket. 

Clarke blushes when she yanks the tag off the mop. “It’s--I’m a very good doctor. High demand, very busy.”

“Of course,” Lexa agrees. She’s impressed Clarke has the pots.

Clarke scrubs at a line of grout. “So how come you picked today to say hello?”

“I didn’t,” Lexa says. “I woke up in your bed. Sorry about that.”

Clarke shrugs. “My mom says I need to exercise more. It certainly elevated my heartrate.”

“Sometimes Anya can move things,” Lexa admits, leaning back against the cabinet and letting the sponge splash into the nearest pot. “She’s never been like this, though.”

Clarke sits across from her, looks her over. Their feet, outstretched, are near enough to touch. “Tell me about Anya? Since I’m living in her house.”

Lexa shakes her head. “Not hers, just mine. She didn’t want her name on the deed.”

“But she lived here? Died here?”

“She didn’t die here.” Lexa shifts, her back rubbing against the handles. “Car crash.”

Clarke taps the side of Lexa’s foot with her own, damp toes on tiles stained pink. “But she haunts this place?”

“I was here,” Lexa explains, simply. “I’m still here.”

 

Clarke makes popcorn. She flicks through the channels for a ghost movie, muttering to herself when she can’t find one. “Ghosthunters,” she decides, and settles into the couch.

Lexa hovers. “You’re taking all of this very well.”

“I thought I was dreaming for a while, then maybe thought I was crazy. I’m kind of waiting to see how which one it is.”

“My insides are tingling,” Lexa informs her. Her knees buckle and she sways before she catches herself. “That wasn’t a come on.”

Clarke stands, eyes worried. “Are you going to die again? Because that was traumatizing.” She coughs. “More so for you, I imagine. But also, surprise there’s a girl who keeps dying in my kitchen and wakes up in my bed and was probably watching when I ate uncooked pizza dough while watching Real Housewives.”

“It was impressive,” Lexa offers. “But you probably shouldn't do it again.” She sits on the couch, sighing.

“You’re going see through again,” Clarke says. “Are you--are you gonna come back, you think?”

Lexa tips her head back onto the couch. “I don’t know.”

The room starts to fade. Clarke’s voice goes echoey, distorted and far away. “I’m sorry I insulted your shirt.”

++

Lexa wakes up in Clarke’s bed. She groans and reaches for the pillow to drag it over her face and her hand passes through it. She’s alone.

++

“Well,” Anya says. “That was something.”

Lexa groans. “I keep waking up in her bed. Where do you wake up?”

“Bathtub. But I’ve never been all--” Anya wiggles her fingers “--solid like you were. Drag going away out for years and all of a sudden you do it once and you can be a real girl again.”

“Whatever,” Lexa mutters. “At least she was out this time. See anything weird while I was gone?”

Anya leads her to the corner of the room, where a small bowl sits on the floor, the contents slightly blackened. Lexa leans in. “Is that…”

“I don’t think she knows the difference between sage sticks and…” Anya waves a hand. “She bought that powdered shit from the grocery store. Smelled terrible.”

“Huh.”

The door opens and shut, Clarke’s creeping footsteps. “Hello? Lexa?” Clarke peeks around the corner of the entryway, face suspicious and hesitant.

“She comes in like that every time now,” Anya informs her. “It was hilarious for like, the first five times.”

“Well I’m all… ghost-y again,” Lexa mutters.

Clarke almost trips rounding the corner. “Lexa!”

Lexa blinks. “You can see me?”

“Yeah. I mean you’re kinda,” Clarke waves her hand. “Casper? But I can see you.”

“Can you see me?” Anya asks, to the side. Clarke doesn’t respond and Anya rolls her eyes. “Typical.”

“Are you okay? It’s been awhile since…” Clarke coughs. “I thought maybe I’d cracked after too many nightshifts. Or that burrito I found in the gas station parking lot. Bellamy warned me about that burrito.”

“This is who you crossed death’s divide to be with,” Anya says. “I’m out of here.” She fades away.

“I uh.” Clarke walks halfway to the kitchen and pauses. “I was going to offer you something to drink.”

“Pass,” Lexa declines.

“Right,” Clarke agrees. She steps close, reaches a hand out. Her fingertip passes through Lexa’s shoulder. “Sorry, sorry. Is it? Does it feel weird?”

“Not really.” Lexa shrugs. “How about for you?”

“Cold, I guess? But… just air.” Clarke sighs. “I could still be totally crazy.”

Lexa hums, agreeing, and Clarke makes an offended noise.

“You’re supposed to say you’re not a hallucination.”

Lexa shrugs again. “That’s exactly what a hallucination would say.”

Clarke shifts on her feet. Lexa examines the baseboards of the hallway leading out towards the stairs. “Uh,” Clarke says. “Do you want to-- I mean, can you--can you leave? The house, I mean.”

“No.”

“Oh. I thought, maybe. Because of--Anya?”

Lexa shrugs. “She’s better at the ghost thing than me.” A small satisfied smile plays around her mouth. “But she never went fully solid like I managed.”

Clarke is looking at her, smiling. “Sisters, then.”

“Yes,” Lexa agrees. 

“And your parents?”

“Long dead.” Lexa waves off Clarke’s sympathies before she can articulate them. “Anya was all I needed.”

“I should sue my realtor,” Clarke blurts, apparently apropos of nothing. Lexa’s brow furrows and she rushes to explain. “Because it’s a law, they’re supposed to disclose if someone died on the premises. I googled it.”

“I’ve been saying that for months,” Lexa says.

“I googled you,” Clarke says, apparently blurting very new piece of information as it occurs to her. “But I only knew your first name? In the movies it’s way easier to figure out who lived in your house before you.”

“Did you try the library? They always go to the library in the movies.”

Clarke looks blank. “I don’t know where the library is.”

Lexa makes a valiant effort not to be judgemental. She’s not sure she entirely succeeds. “Lexa Woods,” she says. 

“Lexa Woods,” Clarke repeats. “I feel like I should offer you sparkling water or something.”

“It’s my house,” Lexa says. “I should offer you sparkling water.”

Clarke puts her hands on her hips. “And who pays rent every month?” 

“Your mother,” Lexa replies snidely.

Clarke flushes. “Only half! Just for the first year. Student loans are a bitch.” She sighs. “The point is moot anyway there’s no sparkling water in this house.”

Lexa shrugs. “If there was I couldn’t drink it.”

Clarke fidgets. “Do you think… are you going to be around for a while?”

Lexa sits on the couch, stubborn. “It’s my house,” she mutters.

She hears Clarke sigh again. “Fine. Whatever. Mi casa es Casper’s casa.”

“ _My_ casa,” Lexa grumbles.

“My corporeal fingers on the remote,” Clarke snipes back. 

“Oh good, another Dance Moms marathon.”

Clarke goes bright red. “I watch it ironically.”

Lexa snorts. Clarke flicks through the channels and Lexa can feel her smug satisfaction when she settles on a reality show about ghost hunters. Lexa only manages fifteen minutes before she breaks. “Ridiculous!”

“How would you know?” Clarke says, laughter in her voice. “You’re a terrible ghost. You’ve been here for ages and I never knew.”

“Maybe you’re really unreceptive to auras,” Lexa says. She groans at the screen. “Can we watch something else please? This is terrible.”

++

Clarke scrolls down her laptop. “If you could have anything in the world right now, what would you order?”

“A new body would be nice.”

“No,” Clarke says impatiently, “to eat, be serious.”

Lexa is quiet for a moment. “Canned asparagus.”

Clarke almost drops her laptop. “ _What_?”

“No,” Lexa agrees, “it’s gross. But I--when I was younger, it was…” she trails off, tries again. “I was so hungry. Anya climbed up on a chair and on the very top shelf of the pantry we found this old can of asparagus. We bashed the top in with a rock and a spatula because we couldn’t find a can opener.” She remembers eating the stalks with her fingers, licking the juice off her wrist. Sitting in the sun on the back porch with Anya’s arm slung around her shoulders and her voice, raw and promising: _I’ve got you, Lexa. I’m gonna take care of you_.

She coughs, shaking the memory away. “It’s silly, I guess.”

“No,” Clarke says. “I get it. I don’t know if doordash can deliver that, though.”

Lexa shrugs. “It’s not like I can eat.”

Clarke peeks over the top of her laptop. “You said Anya could.”

Lexa shrugs again. “She’s determined.”

“Well I believe in you.” Clarke taps a few buttons. “And I want Chinese.”

++

“Okay,” Clarke says, chopsticks poised. “Center your mind, or whatever.”

Lexa glowers. There’s a bite of orange chicken two inches from her mouth. She can smell it, that and the fried rice on the table, the packet of soy sauce that broke and leaked all inside the greasy white plastic bag. “Maybe I could concentrate if you weren’t constantly talking.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. Lexa concentrates. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She tries to remember what it had felt like, to wake up and feel the pillow against her cheek, the sharp surprising exhilarating pain of knocking her hip against the corner of a table. She exhales, slow.

“Wax on,” Clarke whispers, “wax off.”

Lexa’s eyes snap open, she starts to say something snarly and Clarke sticks the bite into her mouth. The sharp tang of citrus on her tongue steals the words away. She chews once, big shocked eyes. She chews again and they flutter close. She makes a truly wanton noise, sighing as she swallows. She thinks her toes might curl. 

When she opens her eyes again Clarke is staring, lips slightly parted. She coughs. “Uh. Do you want some fried rice?”

Lexa reaches for the carton. “I want all the fried rice.”

++

Lexa exhales, slowly sliding down to sprawl out on the couch. “I ate too much,” she mumbles. “I forgot what it feels like to eat too much.”

Clarke shoves all the trash into a bag. “You had an impressive showing,” she agrees. “I would have liked to have a dumpling, though.”

“You can get dumplings whenever you want,” Lexa tells the ceiling. “Who knows if I’ll even come back this time.”

Clarke’s face comes into her field of view, peering down at her. “I’d kind of miss you if you never came back,” she admits. 

Lexa’s feet are tingling. She curls her toes up and releases them again, feeling the pins and needles spread quickly. “Time will tell,” she sighs. “At least I didn’t die again this time.”

Clarke touches her wrist again, hesitant fingers gripping her own. “Bye Lexa.”

Lexa exhales. “Goodbye, Clarke.”

++

Clarke is asleep when Lexa wakes up in her bed. Lexa reaches out to touch her shoulder and her hand passes through, translucent. Lexa sighs. Rolls on her back to face the ceiling and (possibly) a higher power(s). “It doesn’t make sense,” she informs it, “that I can lie on the bed but I can’t touch anything.”

“What?” Clarke mumbles, eyes still closed. “What’re you touching? What’s happening?” Her eyelids flutter, her brow furrowing. “There’s no cheese downstairs.”

“Nothing,” Lexa murmurs, her voice pitched soothing and hushing. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmkay.” Clarke is out cold before she finishes the word.

Lexa lays there, in Clarke’s bed, between Clarke’s sheets. When this was her room it was earth tones, green sheets and dark brown pillows, a small desk in the corner where her laptop charged, a single bookcase against the wall. Clarke’s is an explosion of messy life: clothes spilling out of the closet, mismatched sheets and a Batman pillowcase, polaroids taped to the wall and strung between hanging fairy lights. She turns on her side. Clarke’s bedhead peeking out from the comforter, her little sleep snuffles that edge on snores, the tiny wrinkle of her nose as she dreams. 

++

Clarke wakes up, blinks three times. Lexa watches her pupils focus. Clarke smiles. “Hey,” she mumbles. “You’re back.”

 

She calls in sick. They watch Ghost twice.

++

Clarke pours herself a healthy serving of wine. Then she drains it in three swallows. She refills the glass.

“You’ve been acting weird,” Lexa says, leaned against the wall. “Tired of this apparition already?”

Clarke takes down another glass. “You should try to drink. When’s the last time you got drunk?” She fumbles the glass, nearly dropping it before righting it on the countertop. “Fuck.

Lexa steps up next to her. “It’s alright,” she says, gentling her tone. “It’s okay.”

She lets Clarke think for a while.

 

“I looked you up properly this time,” Clarke admits, while Lexa is trying to will the wine into her body, prodding her fingertip at the rim of it. “Um. Are you sure you can’t get corporeal enough for a drink?”

Lexa pulls her fingers out of the stem of the glass, looking at Clarke suspiciously. “Why. What do you know?”

“Um,” Clarke says. “So do you think you’re like… hanging on because of… like… you know.”

Lexa stares at her. “I do not.”

“Unfinished business!” Clarke blurts. “Like if we solve your--who shot you, then would you go into the light or what-the-fuck-ever?”

“They caught who did it,” Lexa says. 

“Yeah, but… maybe the wrong man went to jail?”

“No, he was guilty.”

Clarke deflates. “Oh.”

Lexa steps closer, eyes narrowed. “You know something.”

“Um,” Clarke says. Her eyes dart around. “Any chance you’re tingly?”

“None.”

“I looked you up,” Clarke repeated. “At the hospital. I thought--I couldn’t find an obituary for you, so I thought maybe you’d been brought here first. Sometimes the ambulances do that, even if it’s a DOA.”

Lexa frowns. “And?”

“And you don’t have an obituary,” Clarke repeats. “And you don’t have a grave. Because you’re not dead.”

Lexa blinks. Then she laughs. Steps back and shakes her head. “Clarke, that--”

Clarke digs in her pocket, unlocking her cellphone and pulling up a photo. “I found you.”

Lexa goes silent. She looks at the screen for a long time.

++

Clarke follows her down the hall. “So you haven’t said anything,” she says, tripping over her words in a nervous rush. “But you’re walking--” she increases her speed, “ _very_ quickly, so I’m just wondering--”

Lexa enters the bathroom. She whirls on her heel, Clarke stopping short to avoid stumbling through her. “Slam,” she snaps.

Clarke blinks. “Slam?”

Lexa swings her arm like a door. “Slam! Slam!”

Clarke backs away. “Okay, right. You should think. I’m gonna--I’ll just be in the kitchen.”

++

Lexa sits on the edge of the bathtub, her head dangling between her knees. 

“You can’t hyperventilate,” Anya says, appearing in front of her. “Because you’re not really breathing. Because you’re not really here.”

“Because I’m not really dead.”

Anya closes the door. “I thought you’d never figure it out.”

Lexa thinks about the photo--the hospital bed and the tubes and the wires and her sunken sickly face. “You never told me.”

Anya crouches in front of her. “I wasn’t sure, at first. Then, when you were so different than me… I don’t know, Lex. It’s not like I’m an expert.” She touches Lexa’s knee, careful, then gently urges Lexa’s head up. “You’ve always been so stubborn.”

“We’re not supposed to be here,” Lexa echoes.

“I didn’t want this for you. But it happened. And you’re just… lingering here. It’s time for us to go.”

Lexa stands up. “Clarke!”

Anya sighs, staying in her crouch. “There’s a reason you can do things now,” she says, raising her voice as Lexa calls out again, as Clarke opens the door and looks straight through her at Lexa, worried and anxious. “There’s a reason you’ve started going away.”

++

“Are you sure?” Clarke asks, as Lexa squares her shoulders and looks at the front door. “You said--”

“I know what I said. Can you drive me to the hospital or not?”

“Of course.” Lexa can hear Clarke moving behind her, the jingle of her keys and the hop she makes as she tugs her shoes on. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Lexa says, and walks out of her house.

++

“It’s different,” she says, on the ride, her gaze fixed out the window. “Only been months, and… it’s different.”

Clarke tries to put her hand on Lexa’s knee, comforting. Her palm thumps down on the seat instead.

++

Clarke fishes a badge out of the glovebox, a hospital id card that hangs from a lanyard. “It’s not my hospital,” she explains, “but I can talk a good game about a consult. It’s enough.”

Lexa follows her. No one else’s eyes linger on her--a wheelchair rolls through her left ankle when she waits too long at the elevator. Clarke spins some kind of solidarity mixed with bullshit on the receptionist and then leads her down the hallways. She stops in front of a blue door. “Here,” she mumbles, as a nurse passes. “This one.”

Lexa hesitates. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Lexa starts to step through the door. She stops. Turns. “Come with me?”

Clarke nods. She opens the door for them both.

++

Lexa hardly recognizes herself. She stands over herself and listens to the beepbeep of the heart rate monitor, looks at the limpness of her own hair and the waxiness of her skin, and she thinks Anya was right.

Clarke coughs. She tugs Lexa’s chart off the hook and flips through it. “No brain activity,” she mutters. “Full life support. Shit.”

“Anya was right,” Lexa says, hovering a ghostly hand over her real one. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

Clarke’s reply is cut off by the door opening. “What are you doing here?” a new voice says. They both spin around, blinking. 

“Aden,” Lexa says, surprised.

“Aden?” Clarke repeats.

Aden narrows his eyes. “How do you know my name?”

Clarke goes blank. “Uhhhh….”

“He’s the beneficiary of my estate,” Lexa says.

“Next of kin,” Clarke blurts. “It’s on the chart.” She lifts it up as proof. “You’re the one keeping Lex--Miss Woods on life support.”

Aden frowns at her. “What business is it of yours? You’re not her doctor.”

Clarke flashes her badge. “Consult on another case. Got turned around.”

“Turn around again,” Aden suggests, cold.

“Of course,” Clarke says, backing out. “Come on,” she hisses at Lexa, and then at Aden’s look, tries to cover: “me! Come on, me, let’s go… do doctor things…” She exits the room.

Lexa lingers. Watches Aden walk to her bedside and smooth her hair, put lotion on her hands. Sit next to her in a plastic chair with his head bowed. His suit is too big for him, but he’ll grow. She touches his shoulder as best she can. “Aden,” she murmurs.

His head rises. He blinks. Checks her closed eyes and then the monitor of her brain activity. Touches her wrist and then takes her hand in his, like she’s brittle. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited,” he says, smoothing the edge of her blanket with his free hand. “It’s been hard, without you. But I won’t let you down again.”

The cold veneer he’d kept up with Clarke, in his polished shoes and his nice watch (a gift from Lexa, two years prior), cracks. He looks like the little kid that used to follow her around with his hair in his eyes. “The doctors keep telling me--” he breaks off, shaking his head. “It’s been a long time, they say. And…” he looks at the monitor, its flat unmoving line.

Lexa bends to whisper in his ear. “Aden.”

He shudders, his eyes gone teary. “I’m sorry, Lexa. This isn’t what you would want, is it?”

Lexa kisses his cheek. Her lips touch his skin and for just a second, she can feel the warmth of it, the give under her dead mouth. His breath catches. “You’re not supposed to be crying in a hospital,” she murmurs. Right where she touches him, her lips start to tingle, then her cheeks, the back of her neck, racing like wildfire. “It’s time to let me go.”

++

Lexa wakes up in the away place and sits up. It’s white, all white, a shade that has clenching her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose and wishing for sunglasses.

“I knew you’d be cliche,” Anya’s voice says, and then her hand touches her shoulder. “Hold on.”

The landscape tips sideways, then upside down. 

Lexa opens her eyes on a playground. She’s sitting in the tanbark in front of the swingset, Anya spinning in place, the chain creaking. “This is where you go?” Lexa asks. “I knew you were a child at heart, but this is excessive.”

“Says the girl whose away place looks like an alien abduction prison cell.”

Lexa rises to her feet, dusting herself off, and sits on the second swing, letting her legs dangle. She shrugs. “It’s not like I remember being there.”

“You’ll remember it this time.” Anya lets the tension go, spinning in circles as the chain unwinds itself with a scrape of metal. 

Lex nudges her toes against the ground to get herself moving and starts to pump her legs. “So you’re an expert.”

“And you’ve finally figured it out? Needed that little twerp to make you grow up?”

Lexa waits until Anya has slowed to a stop. She sticks out her tongue.

Anya snorts. She sighs. “Remember this place?”

Lexa stops moving her legs, letting them hang as dead weight and slow her swinging. “You used to make me come here. I wanted to go to the library.”

“Kids need to play.” Anya sighs again. “I never figured out how to give you a childhood.”

Lexa shrugs, barely moving at all now. “You gave me everything else.”

Anya tilts her head, the barest of disagreement. “I didn’t save you.”

Lexa shrugs again. “I didn’t save you either.” Anya’s hand is dangling in the space between them and Lexa takes it in her own. “Remember the time you tried to throw me a birthday party here?”

“No one came,” Anya mutters, “I forgot you have to send invitations.”

“You came,” Lexa reminds her. “You taught me how to swing.”

They sit for a long time, and the sun never moves from its place in the sky. The clouds don’t roll, the breeze doesn’t ruffle. There’s a stillness that drenches them, sticky and loudly silent. 

 

“Was it enough?” Anya asks, face tilted up at the sky. “I never even figured out all the things I wanted to do.”

Lexa’s grip tightens. “Me neither.”

Anya turns to look at her, smiling. She dips her head to kiss Lexa’s cheek, presses her forehead against Lexa’s temple. “I love you. Don’t make me wait too long.”

“Anya,” Lexa starts, and then she’s alone on the swings.

++

Lexa’s are barely cracked open before she feels a body dive on top of hers. “Wha,” she mumbles, flailing. “What? Clarke?”

“Of course it’s Clarke,” Clarke mutters, winding her arms around Lexa like an octopus. “I missed you.”

“You smell,” Lexa says, before she’s awake enough to engage her filter. 

“Bitch.” Clarke sighs, wiggling closer. “God, I missed you.”

“How long was I gone?”

Clarke hesitates. “A week,” she admits. 

Lexa sits up, abrupt, Clarke tumbling off her. “A _week_?” She looks around the room. “What happened in here?”

Clarke fidgets. “You always… come back in bed. I’ve been waiting.”

“For a week.” Lexa takes a proper look at her. Clarke is pale, her hair hanging limp, her lips dry and starting to look thin and cracked. “You look terrible.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “There’s the charm I remember.” She slides off the bed, grimacing as her back cracks. “I gotta shower.” She hesitates. “And you’ll… you won’t go away while I’m gone?”

Lexa flexes her fingers. She feels more solid than she ever has. She feels very nearly alive. “I won’t.”

 

Even with her assurance, Clarke is in and out of the shower in less than five minutes, almost tripping over herself to make sure Lexa is still sprawled out on the bed, reading one of Clarke’s old textbooks. Lexa hears her stumble, stub her toe on the doorjamb and curse. She doesn't look up. “This is boring,” she says, flipping a page with two fingers. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s modern art,” Clarke says, sitting on the bed in her towel, hair dripping, skin damp. “Heathen.”

“It’s squares,” Lexa mutters. She inhales, looks up. “You smell like flowers.”

Clarke cups her jaw in one hand, her fingers on Lexa’s cheek. “You look alive.”

“It’ll pass.”

Clarke’s eyes are soft, and dark, her pupils dilating. “How long do we have?” Her towel falls to the sheets, her hair tickling against Lexa’s neck. 

“Enough,” Lexa murmurs, and pulls Clarke atop her, their lips meeting.

++

“Alive people get to be the big spoon,” Clarke informs her, and tucks herself around Lexa’s back, nestling in and resting her nose in Lexa’s neck. Lexa rolls her eyes.

“That makes you a necrophiliac.”

Clarke recoils slightly. “Ew Lexa, you’re ruining the mood.”

Lexa shrugs. She stretches her legs until her knees crack, then hums contentedly. She can’t feel the tingling in her toes yet, so she’s got time here, in Clarke’s arms. That’s something. It’s very nearly everything. 

Clarke nudges her hip and Lexa makes an inquiring noise, drowsy. She can feel Clarke’s lips moving against her shoulder when she speaks. “How do you think we would have met? If you hadn’t…” she trails off. 

“Been horribly murdered?”

Clarke winces, very slightly. “Yes. If you hadn’t died, how do you think we would have met?”

Lexa shrugs, pressing her face into the pillow and lazily entwining her leg between Clarke’s. “We lived for years in the same city and never did, why do you think we would have?”

Clarke sighs. “I’m being romantic. Obviously we would have met. You died and we still met, it’s destiny.”

Lexa opens her eyes. She can’t see Clarke, but she can feel her heart and her breathing and the way she’s very slightly tensed. “At the circus,” she says, and feels Clarke relax before she laughs. “I’d be buying popcorn, and you’d be angry because the automated fortune teller machine ate your quarters.”

“And you’d buy me a bag of peanuts?”

“I’d tell you that the machines are rigged and fortune telling isn’t real.”

Clarke snorts. “The supernatural is bogus, says the ghost.”

“I’m not a ghost at the circus,” Lexa says, lofty. Clarke snorts again.

“Tell me another one.”

“Hm.” Lexa arches her back, slightly, rocking back into Clarke’s embrace. “At the bank. I’m renewing my safety deposit box and you’ve come in because you saw an add for a savings account on television and you want to ask what it is.”

Clarke bites under her ear in retaliation. “I think it would have been at the farmer’s market. I’d seduce you by buying you local honey.”

Lexa makes a considering noise. “But what would you be doing at the farmer’s market?”

Clarke bites her again. She drops her tone and makes her murmur comically sultry. “I heard there were free samples.” It startles a giggle out of Lexa, her hand coming up to guide Clarke’s teeth back to her throat. She sighs, her toes curling when Clarke suckles at her pulsepoint. “How much time do we have?” Clarke asks, rough and husky.

Lexa rolls over to kiss her properly. “Work fast.”

++

Lexa slips into the bath and sighs with pleasure, a full body shudder. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is very nearly better than the other thing.” Clarke pinches her ass under the water, making her yelp. “I said very nearly.”

Clarke slips in across from her, sinking down to blow bubbles across the surface of the water. Her feet nudge Lexa’s thighs, her hips, tickle her toes against Lexa’s sides. “You’re cheery when you’re among the living.”

“Mm,” Lexa agrees. The water is soft and silky and perfectly hot, just enough to cause a light flush on their skin. She stretches very lightly, letting her own knees bump against Clarke. She tips her head back against the tub’s edge. 

“I like this,” Clarke says, quickly like she’d had to work up the courage. “I like you.”

Lexa exhales. “Clarke…”

“I mean,” Clarke continues. “I mean. I could--we could call Aden. I could tell him things from you? And--whatever he wants to tell you, I could… And he’d know you were still here. He’d know not to take any… measures.”

“Not to pull the plug, you mean.”

“I do.”

Lexa opens her eyes, meets Clarke’s. “I think you’d be good with kids.”

Clarke’s face sets. She stands with a slosh, water spilling over onto the tile. Slams the door on her way out. Still in the tub, the pins and needles spread to Lexa’s hips.

++

Lexa limps into the living room, in one of Clarke’s shirts. “Clarke.”

Clarke is sitting on the sofa, sweats and a t-shirt with a stain on the sleeves. “It’s my choice,” she says, raw voiced and red-rimmed eyes, her hair a tangled mess. “It’s our choice.”

“We don’t have a future,” Lexa says, because she’s never really made of a habit of lying just to make herself feel better. She grimaces, very slightly, and Clarke stands, alarmed.

“Is it--?”

Lexa shakes her head, lifting her shirt and showing Clarke the unbroken skin. “It’s something else.” She tries to smile. “You can’t fix this, Clarke.”

Clarke eases her down so she’s lying across Clarke’s chest, her forehead leaned against Clarke’s. “Lexa…”

“You’d be good with kids,” Lexa repeats, the feeling gone in her legs. “I never was.”

“Lexa,” Clarke says again, and she’s crying.

Lexa kisses her, once, the last time. Tucks her face into Clarke’s shoulder and feels Clarke’s arms around her. I loved this house, she thinks. She doesn’t mind dying in it, if this is how it goes. Not as bad as the first time. Not with Clarke here.

++

“You’re never going to let me live this down,” Anya mutters in her ear. “You’ve always been the exception.”

++

“Holy shit,” is the first thing Lexa hears. She feels a hand at her throat, checking for a pulse, and she tries to sit up but she can’t. Her entire body hurts.

She makes a croaking noise. She can hear Aden shouting, and it makes her open her eyes. 

She’s in the hospital. Aden is leaned over her, shocked and pale and his hair sticking straight up. A doctor has a stethoscope pressed her to her chest, stuttering to his nursing staff in apparent shock. He’s trying to explain things to her. She waves him off and reaches for Aden, which manifests in a very light twitch of her pinky finger.

Aden grips her hand firmly. “Lexa. I--we just--I thought--”

“Aden,” she rasps, so low and weak he has to lean in and snap at the doctors to shut up. “Aden. I need to make a phone call.”

++

Clarke is sitting on the couch. She’s counting. It’s been two minutes since Lexa was warm on top of her and saying goodbye and talking about kids with a yearning underneath Clarke doesn’t even think she knew was there. Now it’s been three minutes since Lexa kissed her and Clarke thought _I love you_ and didn’t have the courage, even then knowing that it was the last time, to say it.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, again. It’s the third call and she digs it out with an annoyed grunt. “Fucking hell,” she mutters, and answers.

++

“It’s like the Secret Garden,” Clarke says gleefully. “Just call me Emma.”

“No one in that book is named Emma,” Lexa grumbles from the wheelchair. “Don’t treat me like an invalid.”

“You are an invalid,” Clarke continues, still unduly tickled by the idea. “Big strong poltergeist Lexa and now Jello tires you out.”

“I’m going to tell Aden on you,” Lexa mutters.

“Shut up,” Clarke suggests, “and enjoy the roses.”

“Tulips.”

“I don’t care.”

Lexa sighs. “When can I go leave?”

“I’m taking you home as soon as the doctors clear you.”

Lexa pulls a face. “I feel better.”

“You need tests and physical therapy and protein and probably twelve more of these daily garden walks.” Clarke plucks a tulip. “Smell this, you’ll feel better.”

Lexa glares “I want jello.”

Clarke waggles the flower.

Lexa sighs. She smells the flower.

“Good,” Clarke murmurs, and kisses her. When she pulls away Lexa is smiling. 

“I think there’s daisies down the way.”

Clarke straightens. Takes control of Lexa’s wheelchair and aims it towards the daisies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ sunspill


	3. there's a fire in my heart (and you fan it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trick or treat!
> 
> Clarke is very focused on figuring out their costumes for a party. Lexa is pretty focused on getting Clarke out of any clothes at all. (modern au, fluffy ficlet, dorky girlfriends in love)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta-ed

“Sexy nurse,” Clarke says, spinning her screen around. “It’s funny because male doctors call me nurse and ask me where the consult they ordered is.”

“If that’s what you really want,” Lexa responds, elbow deep into soapy dishes. “Is it, Clarke?”

Whenever she says _is it, Clarke_ it means it really isn’t. Clarke sighs. “You’re no fun tonight.”

“Boo,” Lexa says, completely deadpan, “hiss.”

Clarke picks up a green bean from the bowl on the table and flicks it at Lexa’s head. “That was a protest,” she says, when Lexa goes still and flickers a miniglare over her shoulder. “Because this should be a bowl of potato chips.”

Lexa sighs. “You told me not to buy chips anymore. You want me to run down to the store?”

“No,” Clarke mutters, and then: “Yes, kind of. The party is tomorrow and we have nothing, Lexa. Nada.”

Lexa finishes the last dish. She walks by and kisses Clarke’s cheek before dripping water down the back of her shirt, making Clarke yelp. “Go shower, grumpy.” 

She tugs the laptop around, sitting in the chair across from Clarke and ignoring Clarke’s squawk of protest. “Fine,” Clarke says. “But this is a protest shower.”

Lexa is already scrolling, hmming and hawing as she checks out the options. “Noted.”

++

“Clarke,” Lexa says, while Clarke has got her head stuck in her pajama top. “It’s time.”

Clarke wrings her hair out over the bathroom sink, ruffling her fingers through it. “Ominous. You want to go get ice cream again? There’s Lactaid in my purse.”

“No.” Lexa holds up the laptop, and the adapter that connects it to the television.

“Ah,” Clarke says. “Another PowerPoint. You’re lucky I love you.”

 

She sits on the couch, tucks her toes up under her and makes big sad eyes until Lexa brings her a cup of tea. 

Lexa clicks through the first few slides. Clarke counts how long her shower had been--maybe twenty minutes, and Lexa’s got title slides and themes and perfectly formatted sources. She hides her smile in a sip. 

The first suggestion, after the brief educational history of the holiday and how it’s celebrated differently around the world, is a plug and outlet combo. “Veto,” Clarke says, immediately.

“It’s a classic.”

“It _implies penetration_.”

Lexa just blinks at her, neutral. “You like it when I penetrate you.”

Clarke chokes on her tea. Her eyes narrow. “You’re fucking with me.”

Lexa’s facade cracks; she grins. “Every good presentation starts with a humorous faux-suggestion. It breaks the ice and enables the audience to have a more open mind for discussion.”

“Stop it, you know it turns me on when you act like an android.” Clarke waves her hand at the screen. “Click on, Homer.”

“Horatio,” Lexa corrects, her grin widening briefly. The next slide is two aviation jumpsuits.

Clarke’s brow furrows. “Pilots? A little generic.” Lexa clicks to the next slide and Clarke sits up straight. “Oh! Top Gun! But you hate that movie.”

“It’s a straightforward costume,” Lexa allows. “Easily recognizable as pop culture, few props, comfortable for the whole night. We’d be able to put it together before tomorrow night. Doesn’t culturally appropriate.” She pauses. “There is a racist slant. Possibly homophobic. Definitely disrespectful to physics.”

“Next,” Clarke agrees.

Two stock people smile out from the faceholes of giant crayon costumes. Clarke collapses into a fit of giggles, one hand flailing out to put down her drink before she dumps it into her lap or the carpet. Lexa straddles her, taking the cup out of her hand and setting it aside before licking a teasing stripe up Clarke’s cheek. “One of the colors is puke,” she whispers seductively, and Clarke, on the tail end of her laughter, is hit by another wave. 

“I love you,” she murmurs, when she can speak again.

Lexa kisses her throat, Clarke’s hands coming up to smooth around the back of Lexa’s neck, drag her nails through Lexa’s curls. “There’s more slides, if you want.” She bites at Clarke’s neck until Clarke’s breath hitches and she moans. “Smurfs,” she adds, punctuating each suggestion with a suckling bite. “Emojis. A truly heteronormative polyester ball and chain.”

Clarke hooks an ankle around Lexa’s back, pressing their hips together and rocking up into the pressure. “Shut up and fuck me.”

“I’ll be the outlet,” Lexa whispers, sneaking a hand up Clarke’s shirt for a grope while Clarke dissolves into laughter again, “you be the plug.”

Clarke’s giggle catches on a moan, Lexa’s teeth tugging her bra straps off her shoulders, her clever fingers pulling the cups of her bra down. “I’m going in,” Lexa says, comically low and graveled, and Clarke hums the mission impossible theme song while Lexa sticks her head under Clarke’s shirt and kisses up her navel. She loses the tune when Lexa’s tongue finds a nipple, then loses her patience at the first teasing graze of teeth, yanking her shirt over her head and tossing it aside, winding her fingers rough into Lexa’s hair and guiding her mouth where Clarke wants it to go.

++

Clarke surveys the closet. “There has to be something we can use here.”

The hairdryer in the bathroom turns off; Lexa sticks her head out. “What?”

“Outfits!” Clarke says, her hands in the air. “How are we just now picking out our outfits??”

Lexa shrugs. Of course, Clarke thinks. Lexa once spent two hours, mostly unblinking, selecting one of three black ties to wear to a work event. If you’d aimed a gun at Clarke’s head she wouldn’t have been able to articulate a singular difference between the three of them. But this, Lexa is shrugging about.

Clarke plucks at an old hoodie from college. “Goth? We could do goth. A lot of eyeliner, some headphones, lots of existentialist sighing.” She touches a hanging flannel. “How do you feel about lesbians?”

“Pro,” Lexa says, emerging fully dressed in dark ripped jeans and a fuzzy fabric top. “Popstar,” she says smugly, when Clarke gapes, offended and betrayed. She holds up a guitar pick between two fingers. “Anya left this here ages ago. She dropped off an empty guitar case earlier, it’s in the trunk.”

Clarke nods, slowly. She takes a calming breath. “I’m leaving you.”

Lexa rolls her eyes. She crosses to nip at Clarke’s earlobe before reaching into the closet. She hands Clarke a hanger. “Wear this.”

“That’s a teddy,” Clarke says.

Lexa leers. “I know.”

Clarke throws it at her face. “I’m leaving you and I’m taking the kids.”

Lexa retrieves another hanger. “Here.”

“This is a black dress, not a costume,” Clarke says, but she takes it, reluctant.

“You’re my trophy wife,” Lexa suggests, then ducks when Clarke throws the hanger at her face.

++

Lexa is on her phone, leaning against the driver’s side door, when Clarke finally exits their apartment and makes her way to the car park. She’s wearing aviator sunglasses.

“You look like a douche,” Clarke informs her.

Lexa lets the sunglasses slide half an inch down her nose. She looks Clarke up and down. “Admit it, this gets you going.”

“It’d get me going if you weren’t lounging on the broken window of a Nissan Ultima.”

Lexa shrugs. “You went with the dress I picked.”

Clarke sniffs, raising her chin. “Don’t let it go to your head. Open my door already, what kind of girlfriend are you?”

Lexa opens the door for her. Then she crowds against Clarke’s back and bites at her throat until Clarke’s legs buckle and she has to grab the roof of the car for support. “Did you know,” Lexa hums, fingers inching up the inside of Clarke’s thigh. “That the passenger seat goes _all the way_ back?"

++

Octavia answers the door and looks them up and down. “This is a costume party. What are you two supposed to be?”

Clarke has an arm slung around Lexa’s waist, a hickey from the night before on her throat, and a clear case of carsex hair despite her best efforts to rectify it. Lexa lost her guitar pick somewhere between the second parking lot they pulled into and the third. She forgot the guitar case in the trunk. “We’re in love,” Clarke tells Octavia, and pushes into the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ sunspill


	4. if there's one fool for you (than I am it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke has game, she swears. There's just a lot of evidence to the contrary. 
> 
> (modern au, they meet at a halloween party, pure fluff)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta-ed

Raven comes at her with her cane up, en guarde. “I dropped,” she threatens, growly and dead serious, “an _obscene_ amount of money on this haunted house. My bank called because they were convinced I’d been a victim of identity theft. You are coming to the haunted house. You are wearing the costume Octavia hands you. You are going to scare the shit out of strangers, and you are going to have a good time, or you will join the other corpses as ambiance.”

Clarke backs away, attempting a laugh that comes out more nervous than she intended. “There’s not going to be real corpses, right?”

Raven narrows her eyes. “Not if everyone does what I say.”

“I’m there,” Clarke assures her, casting her eyes about for a weapon to defend herself with and coming up empty. “There and willing and eager, even.”

Raven drops her cane back to the floor and leans on it. “Good. Don’t be late.”

++

Octavia designates Clarke a vampire. “Put these in,” she says, thrusting a set of plastic fangs at her. “And if you take them out I tell Raven.”

Clarke sighs. She puts them in.

“Good. Now put this on and report to makeup.”

++

Every time the music cues, Clarke pops out of the cardboard coffin with her arms straight out and does her best Bela Lugosi. In hindsight, she should have known the group of teenagers who heckled her were going to be assholes about it.

She thumps a fist against the top of her coffin and sighs when it refuses to budge. They must have put something heavy on it. She spits out her teeth, grimacing at the drool that accompanies them, and wiggles, trying to kick up and free herself. “Hey,” she shouts, not really thinking she can be heard over the music and the good natured shrieks from other rooms. “Help?” She presses her forehead to the top and sighs.

The pressure, suddenly, alleviates. She shoots upright, flailing and letting out a fairly undignified yelp. The plastic fangs pop out of her mouth and land on the floor.

A girl in facepaint stares back at her, unimpressed. “Were you really just stuck in a cardboard box?”

Clarke coughs. “I want to suck your blood?” she offers.

“The drool is causing your makeup to run,” the girl informs her. 

Clarke wipes at her mouth with the sleeve of her cheap fabric cape. “Thanks.”

“What are you supposed to be?”

Clarke gapes, offended. She gestures at herself. The white face makeup, the cape, the five cans of hairspray keeping her hairdo in place on top of the two cans of cheap black washout dye. “I’m Dracula!”

The girl looks her up and down, doubtful.

“I want to suck your blood,” Clarke insists, in a pitch perfect Transylvanian accent.

“You sound like the count,” the girl says, and Clarke does a very small fist pump of victorious celebration. “From Sesame Street,” the girl clarifies.

“Go fuck yourself,” Clarke suggests. She leans over and retrieves her plastic fangs. There’s dust and hair stuck to them. She grimaces. “Gross.” She flicks them at the other girl, who yelps, recoiling. Her glare intensifies.

“Haunted houses,” she says, disgust dripping from every word. 

She turns to leave and Clarke--Clarke steps after her. “Your costume is just as bad!”

The girl pauses. She looks down at herself, then up at Clarke, just as Raven’s stupid fake lightning timer goes off, the harsh relief of a bright strobe across her features, glinting eyes and warpaint and the sword at her hip that hangs a little too heavy to be made of plastic. “I look good,” the girl says, and she’s so correct it makes Clarke furious.

She crosses her arms. “You look like a Mad Max extra.”

The girl’s brow furrows. “They look good.”

“A _male_ Mad Max extra.”

The girl turns away again. “Goodbye, Ms. Chocula.”

++

“And then,” Clarke says, unwrapping a peanut butter cup and cramming the entire thing in her mouth, “she just left! On a perfect exit line! Fuck her so much.”

Octavia reaches over to move her face so the chocolate crumbs don’t spew out and hit Octavia in the chest. “Chew and swallow and then speak.”

Clarke flips her off, then flops over onto Raven, who’s sprawled out on the couch staring at the ceiling. “You must know who she was.”

“There were two hundred people here,” Raven says, sounding numbed to it all. “It was a total and complete success, and if I say I want to do it again next year you are all to slap me straight in the face.”

Clarke pats her knee and urges a bottle of water into Raven’s hands. “Party fatigue,” she tells Octavia.

“I don’t remember a girl like that,” Octavia says, frowning. Then she brightens. “Oh!” She goes into the kitchen, fumbling through the drawers for a paper takeout menu and a pen. “You can draw her.”

Suddenly, Raven sits up. Octavia and Clarke freeze, hands outstretched to exchange items. “Did people eat all the artichoke dip?”

“No,” Octavia says.

Raven flops back down. “Good. Someone bring me some.”

Octavia tosses the pen and paper at Clarke. She goes into the kitchen as Clarke lifts Raven’s legs to sit under them, using Raven’s thigh as a table. She tries to remember what the girl looked like, the shape of her nose and the bow of her lips, her eyes and her cheekbones and her jawline. It was dark but Clarke has a good eye and she’s doing this more for fun than to plaster the neighborhood with flyers.

Octavia returns with a plastic tub of dip and a spoon. “Here comes the plane,” she coos, baby-voiced. She wiggles the spoon towards Raven’s mouth. “Because we’re out of chips.”

“Next year we’re going out,” Raven vows, and opens her mouth for the airplane.

++

“Something something two shots of espresso,” Octavia says, dumping her bag into an empty chair and sliding a coffee across the table.

Clarke snags it and takes a sip. She grimaces. “It’s really your attention to detail that keeps our friendship alive.”

“Fuck you,” Octavia says, “for that premature insult, because I’m about to win the gold medal of friendship.” She flicks Clarke’s elbow and surreptitiously points over her shoulder. “I found her.”

Clarke turns. She chokes on her coffee, immediately spinning around and hunkering down. “Did she see me?”

“Did she see one of the only two people in this coffee shop gasp loudly, choke on her drink, and then try to hide?” Octavia wiggles her eyebrows. “Bye bitch.” She’s up and towards the bathroom in the back before Clarke can grab her by the wrist, still hacking at trying to breathe coffee.

“Are you dying?” a voice demands. Clarke cringes. Then she looks up.

 _Lexa_ it says, on her nametag, which is the disposable paper peel and stick kind rather than engraved plastic. It’s definitely the same girl. “No,” Clarke says feebly. She tries not to cough again and fails.

Lexa doesn’t look convinced. “Do you want water?”

“No.” Clarke coughs so hard she also sneezes. “Maybe.”

Lexa goes behind the counter. She comes back with a coffee cup of hot water. “Here.” She thrusts it at Clarke. “Drink this.”

Clarke does. “Thanks,” she mumbles. “Sorry.” She casts about for an excuse that isn’t a failure to swallow a single sip of liquid. “I have… allergies.

Lexa is still standing there. “Do you need anything else?” She frowns. “Are you allergic to coffee? Why would you even come here?”

Clarke blinks at her. “I--no! Do I look that stupid?”

Lexa looks her up and down. She leans in a little. She narrows her eyes. “Have we met?”

Clarke shoves the chair back. “No, nope, definitely not.” She shoots to her feet, trying to move her hair across her face to obscure it, snatching up her bag and abandoning Octavia’s things. “And--and you have terrible customer service, if you must know--” she beelines for the door. “Okay, thanks so much! Bye now, come again!”

 

 _What the fuck?_ Octavia texts her, after. _Angrily Hot Barista just accused me of poisoning you_

++

“So,” Clarke says, pacing back and forth in front of the sofa, “in conclusion, is the Halloween spirit ever really gone?”

Raven yawns. “Clarke, seriously, just tell me what you want, I have work tomorrow.”

“Another party,” Clarke says. She holds up a hand before Raven can protest. “No haunted house, no costumes, no venue. Just here, music and snacks and drinks. I’m buying and cleaning.”

Raven blinks. “I mean, okay I guess? You need me to do anything?”

Clarke produces a pad of paper and a pen. “Yes. Every single person you invited to the last party, and everyone you can remember they brought.”

++

“This is dumb,” Octavia says, uncapping a bottle of cheap vodka and pouring into a plastic garbagecan. “You know where she works.”

“She doesn’t work there,” Clarke says, slicing green grapes into small pieces. “I went back three times. I heard someone say that everyone was calling out sick, they called in family and friends to help cover.”

Octavia runs out of vodka and tosses the bottle at the recycling bin, where it lands with a plastic clatter. She reaches into the cabinet and finds a third of a bottle of rum. “Creepo,” she sing-songs. Clarke throws the grape pieces into the bowl so they splash Octavia.

“Are you sure you’re doing this right?” 

Octavia finishes dumping the rum in and grabs a handful of mangled apple slices from the cutting board, dunking them in. “I don’t know. Isn’t sangria supposed to be like… wine?”

Clarke frowns. “Is it? I thought it the key was citrus. That’s why I bought the lemon vodka.”

Octavia taps at her phone, drinking casually from the rum bottle. “No, it says red wine.”

“Raven likes red,” Clarke says. They squirrel out a half full bottle and dump it in.

Octavia dips a mug in and sips. She cough. “Oh fuck. Oh god that’s--”

Clarke grabs the mug out of Octavia’s hand and takes a long drink. Her face contorts. “It’s--” she manages, “it’s not that bad.”

Octavia sticks her head into the sink and drinks directly from the faucet. “Oh god, I can still taste it.”

Clarke drains the mug, to prove she can. “It’s not that bad,” she says again. “After the third swallow, everything goes sort of numb.” She sticks her tongue out and pokes it with a finger.

Octavia looks curious despite herself. “Really? Give me the cup.”

++

“What you should do,” Octavia says, sticking her entire hand into the garbagecan and coming back up with a wet sleeve and four soggy grape pieces. She pops them into her mouth. “Is wear the same costume you did to the party. That way she knows it’s you, and she might forget about the coffee choking thing.”

Clarke stands with a wobble. “You’re a genius. Come help me do my makeup.” She looks at her bare wrist. “What time are the guests supposed to get here?”

Octavia shrugs. “What time did you say on the e-vite?”

Clarke blinks. “The… invites…”

++

Raven stands over them, arms crossed. “You’re drinking out of a garbage can.”

Octavia giggles. She’s wearing an apple slice on her head like a tiny top hat. She tips it at Raven.

“It’s clean,” Clarke assures her. “We bought it at Ikea just for this.”

Raven picks it up and moves it out of reach. “Not sure that makes it better. You look ridiculous. What happened to the party?”

“Nose goes for invites,” Clarke says, too loud. Then she pokes herself in the eye. “Shit.”

Raven sighs. She hefts up the garbage can and sniffs it. “Oh my god.” She pours it into the sink, then rinses it out, grimacing. She gives it a shake and sets it by Octavia’s hip. “For puking.”

Octavia hugs Raven’s ankle, splayed out on the kitchen tile on her belly. “You’re the best. Can I stay here tonight?”

Raven uses the tip of her cane to pry Octavia off her leg. “You live here.”

Clarke has an epiphany. “I’m going to throw up.”

++

Clarke wakes up in the bathtub. She has a vague memory of throwing up with Octavia and attempting a high five. She groans. Staggers to her bed and passes out.

++

Six hours later, Clarke and Octavia end up in the bathroom at the same time. Octavia is sitting on the closed toilet lid, a fading handprint on her face she’s wearing one of Raven’s shirts, inside out and backwards. “I called Lincoln,” she says. “As soon as he gets here and mercy kills me, the bathroom’s all yours.”

Clarke climbs into the tub, shucking her shirt and her pants and wincing at the cold porcelain on her skin. “Can he kill me too?”

“Get your own boyfriend.”

++

Clarke showers. She dresses in sweats and stumbles into the living room, where Raven is watching television and working on her laptop. “Coffee,” Clarke begs.

Raven’s fingers click away at the keys. “You threw up in the machine. And the sink.”

Clarke thinks about the amount of work necessary to make a cup of coffee. It makes her feel dizzy. “Give me the…” she waves her fingers. “Dollars.”

Raven digs out her wallet and fishes out a twenty. “Just because of how very pathetic you look right now.”

Clarke takes the money, and then the sunglasses, that Raven offers. She’s got one hand on the doorknob when Raven calls her back.

“Clarke! Shoes!”

++

“Coffee,” Clarke grunts, far ruder to the barista than she’d ever be normally. “Two. Big cup.” She winces at the sound of the bell on the door, then stuffs her change in the tip jar to compensate for her general existence. She slumps into an empty chair and lays her head, the hood pulled up, onto her crossed arms.

“Hello,” someone says. 

“Coffee,” Clarke mumbles. 

“Every interaction with you is very strange.” Clarke hears the chair across from her scrape on the floor, feels the gentle shake of the table. A styrofoam cup nudges against her fingers.

She lifts her face, feels the sunglasses slide far enough down her nose she can look out over them. “Oh,” she says. “This is exactly what I should have been expecting.”

Lexa raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lexa repeats. “Drink the water, Clarke.”

Clarke narrows her eyes. “How do you know my name?”

Lexa turns the cup around, _Clarke_ scrawled in the cashier’s handwriting. “Would you prefer Dracula?”

Clarke groans. “I’m too hungover to banter.” She sips at her drink, disgruntled. “And I ordered coffee.”

“Coffee is a diuretic. You need water. And these.” Lexa places two pills on the tabletop. “B12 vitamins.”

“Or cyanide,” Clarke accuses, her face back flat on the table, her words muffled. “Tryna kill me.”

“Unlikely,” Lexa disagrees. “There are far too many witnesses here. I’d wait to poison you somewhere private.”

Clarke drags the sunglasses off her face, sitt up just a smidge and wincing at the light hitting her eyes. “Is this flirting? Telling me how you’d poison me?” A lance of pain pierces straight through her temple into her brain. “Can you do it soon?”

Lexa smiles. “Did you really throw another party just to meet me and then forget to invite me?” She catches Clarke’s gaping look and holds up her phone. “Raven and my cousin are lab partners.”

Clarke closes her mouth. Then she shrugs. What’s happened already happened and she’s not one to dwell. “Admit it, it’s romantic. I’ve got game.”

“You have vomit on your shoe.”

Clarke waggles her eyebrows, despite the headache. “And tits that don't quit.”

Lexa’s smile grows. She reaches across the table and takes Clarke’s wrist, tugging it out, turning her hand palm up. Her other hand is holding a pen, the cap popping off with a nudge of her thumb. She writes on Clarke’s inner forearm. “When you’ve recovered,” she says, “... and perhaps showered. You should call me.”

She releases Clarke’s arm. Clarke looks at the message in blue ballpoint ink on her skin. _Lexa Woods_ , it says, in neat block letters, and then, underneath, a phone number.

“So you don’t have to throw another party,” Lexa says. Then she snags Clarke’s sunglasses where they’re laying on Clarke’s arm, slides them on her own face and she stands and starts to saunter away. “We can decide who has the most game.”

++

When they move in, on a Halloween, Raven makes them trashcan sangria for their housewarming party and declares herself the godmother of their children.

“Clarke killed all the succulents already,” Lexa informs her. 

Clarke bites Lexa’s throat with her plastic fangs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ sunspill


	5. i've one thing to say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canonverse fluff ficlet, Halloween Night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta-ed

Lexa frowns. “Why did they dress up?”

“I think for fun.” Clarke coughs, hiding her face slightly. “I mean, uh. I know there was a historical reason. Probably there’s a historical reason.”

Lexa regards her, silent and eyes faintly narrowed.

“I wasn’t the most attentive student,” Clarke admits.

Lexa smiles. “No,” she says, and her tone is coloured with fondness.

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Shof op. Aren’t you supposed to be helping me? Less mocking, more face painting.”

“Hold still.” The brush is tickly on Clarke’s face. “I’m not as good as an artist as you are.”

“You do pretty well with that warpaint. You know I like your warpaint.” Clarke flutters her eyelashes.

Lexa’s face flickers.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she responds, voice carefully neutral. “Hold still.”

Clarke catches her wrist. “No, tell me.”

Lexa tilts her own head at Clarke, eyes faintly shadowed by the angle. “What do you think my paint is?”

Clarke hesitates. “Bird?” she guesses.

Lexa smiles. “Yes.” She says a word in her language, and then slower, so Clarke can hear it clearly. “A night bird,” she explains. “A hunter.” Her fingers flex, adding the last touch of paint across the bridge of Clarke’s nose. “Done.”

Clarke doesn’t relinquish Lexa’s hand. Kisses her knuckles and the tips of her fingers, the center of her palm and three times on the inside of her wrist. “Tell me.”

“Wisdom,” Lexa murmurs, winding Clarke closer and closer. She blows on Clarke’s face, drying the paint. “And a war song. The protectors of orphans. Commanders are guardians, and they belong to the earth.”

They kiss, slow. When it breaks they stay just there, lips bumping, giving breath. “What did you paint on me?” Clarke asks.

“A surprise.”

Lexa kisses her again, slower and longer, until Clarke nudges her away. “Can’t distract me. Where’s the mirror?”

Lexa produces the polished piece of metal. Clarke examines the pattern, over her right eye and down her cheek, across her jaw and the bridge of her nose. “What does it mean?”

“It means you should pay more attention when Lincoln teaches you things.”

Clarke sticks out her tongue. “He says my trigedasleng is getting better.”

“Hm,” Lexa says, neutrally teasing. Clarke sticks her tongue out farther. It makes Lexa smile. “It’s stylized, but it’s an approximation of the sky. To show your clan roots.”

Clarke straddles her, lazy, nuzzling just the tip of her nose across Lexa’s jaw. “And how important is your presence at the festivities?”

Lexa takes advantage of the position to start braiding Clarke’s hair. “Important.”

++

Lexa makes a speech. Clarke stands with the other ambassadors, listening with only half an ear--she’s head all three iterations of this speech, the final one twice. When it’s done she takes her seat for the feast; Lexa placed her next to her mother, ostensibly as a favour but more likely because of the incident last week with the sean clan ambassador. 

Clarke makes small talk and tries to keep her mother from offending and being offended; with every occassion it gets easier, smoother, feels more awkward than the brink of war. By the bitter drink that’s served just after dessert to signify the end of the meal, she’s telling her mother a funny story about a horse and her mother is catching her up on the gossip from Arkadia. 

“And Lexa?” her mother asks.

Clarke stiffens. “Heda is doing very well,” she says, carefully conscious of who’s around them. 

“Hm,” her mother says, and Clarke excuses herself.”

++

She hides until the party starts, making small talk with the few people who come upon her out-of-the-way spot. When she hears things get raucous she ventures out. The clearing is alive with fires, ranging from smaller sputtering flames and torches to roaring bonfires and everything in between. The shadows at the treelines flicker with light, the younger ones of each clan running through the woods and whooping.

Clarke realizes she’s stopped thinking of herself as a young person and grimaces. She seeks out Lexa.

++

Lexa, Clarke is gleeful to discover, is hiding behind a tree. “Commander,” she says, in her best growl, and Lexa almost starts as she straightens up, mouth open before she realizes it’s Clarke. She smiles, sheepish, and offers Clarke her hand. 

“Enjoying the party?”

Clarke shrugs. She takes Lexa’s hand. “Better with you.” They walk away from the noise, through the trees. “You sure they won’t miss you?” She waggles her eyebrows. “And the spirits won’t get us?”

“Only the lonely wander,” Lexa replies. She takes Clarke’s arm to help steady her on the uneven footing, then pulls her close, arms linked, heads on shoulders. “And I think we won’t be missed.”

“For a while,” Clarke agrees. Lexa’s sword on her hip bumps Clarke’s leg; her sash tangles under their feet if they’re not careful. They both smell like smoke and braised meats and sugary wine, and their facepaint has begun to run from the heat of the fires.

They stop when they get to a meadow, very small and hidden away by branches and leaves and snarled roots. Lay down in the rich dark earth and curl around each other. Lexa murmurs her name and draws her red sash over their legs to stay warm; Clarke kisses her breathless. The noise of the festivities fades away into the distance and so do their titles, their responsibilities. The scars and the years and the things they’ve lost and can’t ever get back.

And then it’s just them, together, under the moon, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway, halloween is the best holiday dems the facts. 
> 
> let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ sunspill


End file.
